1. Dante, The Divine Comedy: Inferno

2. I learned that to this place of punishment
all those who sin in lust have been condemned,
those who make reason slave to appetite; (V, 37-39)

3. I learned that to this place of punishment
all those who sin in lust have been condemned,
those who make reason slave to appetite;
and as the wings of starlings in the winter
bear them along in wide-spread, crowded flocks,
so does that wind propel the evil spirits:
now here, then there, and up and down, it drives them
with never any hope to comfort them —
hope not of rest but even of suffering less. (V, 37-45)

10. I learned that to this place of punishment
all those who sin in lust have been condemned,
those who make reason slave to appetite;
and as the wings of starlings in the winter
bear them along in wide-spread, crowded flocks,
so does that wind propel the evil spirits:
now here, then there, and up and down, it drives them
with never any hope to comfort them —
hope not of rest but even of suffering less. (V, 37-45)

11. “Are you then Virgil, are you then that fount
from which pours forth so rich a stream of words?”
I said to him, bowing my head modestly.
“O light and honor of the other poets,
may my long years of study, and that deep love
that made me search your verses, help me now!
You are my teacher, the first of all my authors,
and you alone the one from whom I took
the noble style that was to bring me honor.” (I, 79-87)

12. Midway along the journey of our life
I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
for I had wandered off from the straight path.
(I, 1-3)

17. As doves, called by desire to return
to their sweet nest, with wings outstretched and poised,
float downward through the air, guided by their will,
so these two left the flock where Dido is
and came toward us through the malignant air,
such was the tender power of my call. (V, 82-87)

18. One day we read, to pass the time away,
of Lancelot, how he had fallen in love;
we were alone, innocent of suspicion.
Time and again our eyes were brought together
by the book we read; our faces flushed and paled.
To the moment of one line alone we yielded:
it was when we read about those longed-for lips
now being kissed by such a famous lover,
that this one (who shall never leave my side)
then kissed my mouth, and trembled as he did.
Our Galehot was that book and he who wrote it.
That day we read no further. (V, )

19. So it is
that nothing is more sweet in the end than country
and parents
ever, even when far away one lives in a fertile
place, when it is in alien country, far from his parents. (Odyssey, IX, 33-36)

20. Not sweetness of a son, not reverence
for an aging father, not the debt of love
I owed Penelope to make her happy,
could quench deep in myself the burning wish
to know the world and have experience
of all man’s vices, of all human worth.
So I set out on the deep and open sea
with just one ship and with that group of men,
not many, who had not deserted me.
(XXVI, )

21. Do not deny
yourself experience of what is beyond,
behind the sun, in the world they call unpeopled.
Consider what you came from: you are Greeks!
You were not born to live like mindless brutes
but to follow paths of excellence and knowledge! (XXVI, )

22. I know that I grieved then, and now again
I grieve when I remember what I saw,
and more than ever I restrain my talent
lest it run a course that virtue has not set;
for if a lucky star or something better
has given me this good, I must not misuse it. (XXVI, 19-24)

23. We climbed, he first and I behind, until,
through a small round opening ahead of us
I saw the lovely things the heavens hold,
and we came out to see once more the stars. (XXXIV, )