Francesco Petrarca Quotes

“A short cut to riches is to subtract from our desires.”

“Among various joys, the fruit of labor is the sweetest.”

“Blessed be the eyes that saw her while she lived!”

“Books have led some to learning and others to madness.”

“Death is a sleep that ends our dreaming. Oh, that we may be allowed to wake before death wakes us.”

“I am possessed by one insatiable passion, which I cannot restrain nor would I if I could... I cannot get enough books.”

“I wish to go beyond the fire that burns me.”

“Learning is my sole delight.”

“Like our stomachs, our minds are hurt more often by overeating than by hunger.”

“No one is a man of learning unless he is also a heretic and a madman, and above all, aggressively perverse.”

“Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.”

“Shame is the fruit of my vanities, and remorse, and the clearest knowledge of how the world's delight is a brief dream.”

“Suspicion is the cancer of friendship.”

“The world’s delight is a brief dream.”

“To have displeased evil and ignorant men is the sure sign of genius and virtue.”