“In his Comedy, Dante Alighieri names Virgil, with many tokens of respect, as his teacher, and yet as Herr Meinhard remarks, makes such ill use of him: clear proof that even in the days of Dante one praised the ancients without knowing why. This respect for poets one does not understand and yet wishes to equal is the source of the bad writing in our literature.”

“His (Islamic astronomer al-Farghani) legacy also endures through the Italian writer and poet Dante (1265-1321), who derived most of the astronomical knowledge he included in his DIVINE COMEDY from the writings of al-Farghani (whom he referred to by his Latin name, Alfraganus).”

“For the first time in his life he understood why the Bible called sex "knowing". Everything was different. Now he knew Dante. He'd known Dante. And wonder of wonders, Dante had known him right back.”

“When the Italian poet Dante described the center of hell in his poem The Divine Comedy, he got it wrong. The epicenter of Hades isn't Satan trapped in a block of ice munching on Judas Iscariot like an everlasting carrot stick. The center of hell is a restaurant on Mother's Day.”

“Shakespeare brings us to know ourselves. Dante, with his dissection of all others, bids us to know one another.”

“Why our poet chose to give his 1958 hurricane a little-used Spanish name sometimes given to parrots) instead of Linda or Lois, is not clear.”