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Book: The Dante Club
Quotes of Book: The Dante Club
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  1. Matthew Pearl _ The Dante Club

    Lo giorno se n'andava" - Day was departing..." Dante slows his deliberation as he prepares to enter the infernal realms for the first time: "... e io sol uno" - "and only I alone..." -how lonely he felt! He has to say it three times! io, sol, uno... "m'apparecchiava a sostener la guerra, sì del cammino e sì de la pietate.
    book-quoteloneliness-or-solitude

  2. Matthew Pearl _ The Dante Club

    Believe that when I am at once a man's friend I am always so-nor is it so very hard to bring me to it. And though a man may enjoy himself in being my enemy, he cannot make me HIS for longer than I wish. Good afternoon." Lowell had a way of leaving a conversation with the other person needing more from him.
    book-quotefriendship

  3. Matthew Pearl _ The Dante Club

    Dante is the first Christian poet, the first one whose whole system of thought is colored by a pure Christian theology. But the poem comes nearer to us than this. It is there real history of a brother man, of a tempted, purified, and at last triumphant human soul; it teaches the benign ministry of sorrow. His is the first keel that ever ventured into the silent sea of human consciousness to find a new world of poetry. He held heartbreak at bay for twenty years, and would not let himself die until he had done his task. Neither shall Longfellow. Neither shall I."Lowell turned and started to descend.
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  4. Matthew Pearl _ The Dante Club

    No, never mind, I didn't think so. Mead, Dante's theme is man-not a man.' Lowell said finally with a mild patience that he reserved only for students. "The Italians forever twitch at Dante's sleeves trying to make him say he is of their politics and their way of thinking. Their way indeed! To confine it to Florence or Italy is to banish it from the sympathies of mankind. We read Paradise Lost as a poem but Dante's Comedy as a chronicle of our inner lives. Do you boys know of Isaiah 38:10
    book-quotedivine-comedyjohn-miltonparadise-lost

  5. Matthew Pearl _ The Dante Club

    Milton was the gold standard of religious poets for English and American scholars. But Milton wrote of Hell and Heaven from above and below, respectively, not from the inside: safer advantages.
    book-quotejohn-milton

  6. Matthew Pearl _ The Dante Club

    We never like the smell of our own vices in other people, Holmes. Ah, let's steer here for a drink or two," Lowell suggested.
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  7. Matthew Pearl _ The Dante Club

    ...It is the one time Dante calls such explicit attention to the idea of contrapasso-a word for which we have no exact translation, no precise definition in English, because the word in itself is its definition... Well, my dear Longfellow, I would say countersuffering ... the notion that each sinner must be punished by continuing the damage of his own sin against him... just as these Schismatics are cut apart...
    book-quotesindivine-comedy

  8. Matthew Pearl _ The Dante Club

    Longfellow smiled. "A great part of the happiness of life consists not in fighting battles, my dear Lowell, but in avoiding them. A masterly retreat is in itself a victory.
    book-quotelifemeaning-of-life

  9. Matthew Pearl _ The Dante Club

    A man was leaning idly against an elm. ... The man, who towered over the poet even at his slanting angle, too old for a student and too worn for a faculty member, stared at him with the familiar, insatiable gleam of the literary admirer.
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  10. Matthew Pearl _ The Dante Club

    Now, on his way to another lecture, the very thought of entering a room full of students, who still thought it was possible to learn all about something, made him yawn.
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  11. Matthew Pearl _ The Dante Club

    When you ask one friend to dine, give him your best wine. When you ask two, the second best will do.
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  12. Matthew Pearl _ The Dante Club

    Till America has learned to love literature not as an amusement, not as 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.
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