Petrarch
Petrarch
Francesco Petrarca, commonly anglicized as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar and poet in Renaissance Italy, and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited for initiating the 14th-century Renaissance. Petrarch is often considered the founder of Humanism. In the 16th century, Pietro Bembo created the model for the modern Italian language based on Petrarch's works, as well as those of Giovanni Boccaccio, and, to a lesser extent, Dante Alighieri. Petrarch would be later endorsed as...
NationalityItalian
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth20 July 1304
CityArezzo, Italy
CountryItaly
Five enemies of peace inhabit with us - avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.
All pleasure in the world is a passing dream.
Death is a sleep that ends our dreaming. Oh, that we may be allowed to wake before death wakes us.
And men go about to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the sea, and the wide sweep of rivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the revolution of the stars, but themselves they consider not.
Where are the numerous constructions erected by Agrippa, of which only the Pantheon remains? Where are the splendorous palaces of the emperors?
I rejoiced in my progress, mourned my weaknesses, and commiserated the universal instability of human conduct.
How fortune brings to earth the over-sure!
Who naught suspects is easily deceived.
You keep to your own ways and leave mine to me.
The greater I am, the greater shall be my efforts.
Wanting is not enough, long and you attain it.
For style beyond the genius never dares.