“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.”

“Love, that exempts no one beloved from loving,Seized me with pleasure of this man so strongly,That, as thou seest, it doth not yet desert me.”

“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.”

“So that the Universe felt love,by which, as somebelieve,the world has many times been turned to chaos.And at that moment this ancient rock,here and elsewhere, fell broken into pieces.”

“Love, which absolves no one beloved from loving,seized me so strongly with his charm that,as you see, it has not left me yet.Love brought us to one death.”

“Amor, ch'al cor gentile ratto s'apprendeprese costui de la bella personache mi fu tolta; e 'l modo ancor m'offende.Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona,Mi prese del costui piacer sì forte,Che, come vedi, ancor non m'abbandona...""Love, which quickly arrests the gentle heart,Seized him with my beautiful formThat was taken from me, in a manner which still grieves me.Love, which pardons no beloved from loving,took me so strongly with delight in himThat, as you see, it still abandons me not...”

“As flowerlets drooped and puckered in the night turn up to the returning sun and spread their petals wide on his new warmth and light-just so my wilted spirits rose again and such a heat of zeal surged through my veins that I was born anew.”