The Dante Club
Matthew Pearl
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Shakespeare brings us to know ourselves. Dante, with his dissection of all others, bids us to know one another.”
“He was outwardly calm but inwardly bleeding to death.”
“Though a woman tempted man to eat, my dear Longfellow," said Holmes, "you never hear of Eve having to do with his drinking, for he took to that of his own notion.”
“I prefer the society of one faithful person to an association of rapid talkers, who more than anything else seek admiration from one another.”
“Why did nature not ask my advice about my features?”
“There was still the temptation to believe the world was a mere trap for human sin. But sin, the way he saw it, was only the failure of an imperfectly made being to keep a perfect law.”
“ 'Yes, we rather condemn people for eternity without the courtesy of informing them.' ”
“Dante's Hell is part of our world as much as part of the underworld, and shouldn't be avoided, Lowell said, but rather confronted. We sound the depths of Hell very often in this life.”
“ 'Till America has learned to love literature not as an amusement, not as a mere doggerel to memorize in a college room, but for its humanizing and ennobling energy, my dear reverend president, she will not have succeeded in that high sense which alone makes a nation out of a people. That which raises it from a dead name to a living power.' ”
“You have never fought for anything in your life. You write poems and articles about slavery and the murder of Indians and hope something will change. You fight what does not come near your door, professors. You've inherited everything in your lives and do not know what it is to cry for your bread! Well, with what other expectations did I come to this country? What should I complain of? The greatest bard had no home but exile. One day to come, perhaps, I shall walk on my own shores again, one more with true friends, before I leave this earth.”
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Book Keywords:
humor-inspirational, poetic, inspirational, tragic
