Inferno Events Quotes

And almost where the hillside starts to rise – look there! – a leopard, very quick and lithe, a leopard covered with a spotted hide. He did not disappear from sight, but stayed; indeed,...

O Muses, o high genius, help me now; o memory that set down what I saw, here shall your excellence reveal itself! (Inf. II, 7-9)

Here sighs and lamentations and loud cries were echoing across the starless air, so that, as soon as I set out, I wept. Strange utterances, horrible pronouncements, accents of anger, words of suffe...

[Virgil]: "Look well at him who holds that sword in hand, who moves before the other three as lord. That shade is Homer, the consummate poet; the other one is Horace, satirist; the third is Ovid, a...

And as, in the cold season, starlings’ wings bear them along in broad and crowded ranks, so does that blast bear on the guilty spirits: now here, now there, now down, now up, it drives them....

At which I said: "And after the great sentence – o master – will these torments grow, or else be less, or will they be just as intense?" And he to me: "Remember now your science, which...

Here, more than elsewhere, I saw multitudes to every side of me; their howls were loud while, wheeling weights, they used their chests to push. They struck against each other; at that point, each t...

They were all shouting: "At Filippo Argenti!" At this, the Florentine, gone wild with spleen, began to turn his teeth against himself. (Inf. VIII, 61-63)

…the sepulchers make all the plain uneven, so they did here on every side, except that here the sepulchers were much more harsh; for flames were scattered through the tombs, and these had kin...

[Cavalcanti]: … "If it is your high intellect that lets you journey here, through this blind prison, where is my son? Why is he not with you?" I answered: "My own powers have not brought me;...

[Virgil]: "Philosophy, for one who understands, points out, and not in just one place," he said, "how nature follows – as she takes her course – the Divine Intellect and Divine Art; and...

And at the edge above the cracked abyss, there lay outstretched the infamy of Crete, conceived within the counterfeited cow; and, catching sight of us, he bit himself like one whom fury devastates...

No green leaves in that forest, only black; no branches straight and smooth, but knotted, gnarled; no fruits were there, but briers bearing poison. Even those savage beasts that roam between Cecina...

Above that plain of sand, distended flakes of fire showered down; their fall was slow – as snow descends on alps when no wind blows. Just like the flames that Alexander saw in India’s h...

[Dante]: "Within my memory is fixed – and now moves me – your dear, your kind paternal image when, in the world above, from time to time you taught me how man makes himself eternal; and...

Faced with that truth which seems a lie, a man should always close his lips as long as he can – to tell it shames him, even though he’s blameless; But here I can’t be still; and b...

And he came on, that filthy effigy of fraud, and landed with his head and torso but did not draw his tail onto the bank. The face he wore was that of a just man, so gracious was his features’...

[Virgil]: … "Look at that mighty one who comes and does not seem to shed a tear of pain: how he still keeps the image of a king! That shade is Jason, who with heart and head deprived the men...

[Dante to Pope Nicholas III]: "I’d utter words much heavier than these, because your avarice afflicts the world: it tramples on the good, lifts up the wicked. You, shepherds, the Evangelist h...

As I inclined my head still more, I saw that each, amazingly, appeared contorted between the chin and where the chest begins; they had their faces twisted towards their haunches and found it necess...

He threw the sinner down, then wheeled along the stony cliff: no mastiff’s ever been unleashed with so much haste to chase a thief. (Inf. XXI, 43-45)

O you who read, hear now of this new sport… The Navarrese, in nick of time, had planted his feet upon the ground; then in an instant he jumped and freed himself from their commander. At this...

Below that point we found a painted people, who moved about with lagging steps, in circles, weeping, with features tired and defeated. And they were dressed in cloaks with cowls so low they fell be...

"Mule that I was, the bestial life pleased me and not the human; I am Vanni Fucci, beast; and the den that suited me – Pistoia." (Inf. XXIV, 124-126)

As I kept my eyes fixed upon those sinners, a serpent with six feet springs out against one of the three, and clutches him completely. It gripped his belly with its middle feet, and with its forefe...

[Ulysses]: "And I and my companions were already old and slow, when we approached the narrows where Hercules set up his boundary stones that men might heed and never reach beyond; upon my right, I...

I still was bent, attentive, over him [Guido da Montefeltro], when my guide nudged me lightly at the side and said: "You speak; he is Italian." (Inf. XXVII, 31-33)

No barrel, even though it’s lost a hoop or end-piece, ever gapes as one whom I saw ripped right from his chin to where we fart: his bowels hung between his legs, one saw his vitals and the mi...

[Capocchio to Dante]: "…see that I’m the shade of that Capocchio whose alchemy could counterfeit fine metals And you, if I correctly take your measure, recall how apt I was at aping nat...

When Juno was incensed with Semele and thus, against the Theban family had shown her fury time and time again, then Athamas was driven so insane that, seeing both his wife and their two sons, as sh...

I’d only turned my head there briefly when I seemed to make out many high towers; then I asked him: "Master, tell me, what’s this city?" And he to me: "It is because you try to penetrat...

No clamp has ever fastened plank to plank so tightly; and because of this, they butted each other like two rams, such was their fury. And one from whom the cold had taken both his ears, who kept hi...

[Ugolino]: "…I heard them nailing up the door of that appalling tower; without a word, I looked into the faces of my sons. I did not weep; within, I turned to stone. They wept; and my poor li...

O reader, do not ask of me how I grew faint and frozen then – I cannot write it: all words would fall far short of what it was. I did not die, and I was not alive; think for yourself, if you...