“Open your mind to what I shall disclose, and hold it fast within you; he who hears, but does not hold what he has heard, learns nothing.”

“If i thought i was replying to someone who would every return to the world, this flame would cease it's flickering. But since no one has returned from these depths alive, if what I've heard is true, I will answer you without fear of infamy.”

“The mind which is created quick to love, is responsive to everything that is pleasing, soon as by pleasure it is awakened into activity. Your apprehensive faculty draws an impression from a real object, and unfolds it within you, so that it makes the mind turn thereto. And if, being turned, it inclines towards it, that inclination is love; that is nature, which through pleasure is bound anew within you.”

“And I — my head oppressed by horror — said:"Master, what is it that I hear? Who arethose people so defeated by their pain?"      And he to me: "This miserable wayis taken by the sorry souls of thosewho lived without disgrace and without praise.      They now commingle with the coward angels,the company of those who were not rebelsnor faithful to their God, but stood apart.      The heavens, that their beauty not be lessened,have cast them out, nor will deep Hell receive them —even the wicked cannot glory in them.”

“Until he shall have driven her back to Hell,”

“And as he, who with laboring breath has escaped from the deep to the shore, turns to the perilous waters and gazes.”

“O you, who in some pretty boat,Eager to listen, have been followingBehind my ship, that singing sails alongTurn back to look again upon your own shores;Tempt not the deep, lest unawares,In losing me, you yourselves might be lost.The sea I sail has never yet been passed;Minerva breathes, and pilots me Apollo,And Muses nine point out to me the Bears.You other few who have neck upliftedBetimes to the bread of angels upon Which one lives and does not grow sated,Well may you launch your vesselUpon the deep sea.”