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Your Quotes for 20 July 2005 - Petrarch

Francesco Petrarch was born at Arezzo, Italy on this day in 1304. His father was a clerk in an ecclesiastical court, so the family moved to Avignon when the Pope did. Francesco was to be trained in law, but preferred to write, angering his father. He became a priest for the small stipend it paid and the time it allowed him to travel and write, on his travels he researched old manuscripts and found some lost works of Cicero as well as some by lesser authors. In 1341 he was crowned poet laureate of Rome. Although he wrote a great deal in both French and Latin, he is most remembered for his Italian sonnets, largely devoted to a woman named Laura, apparently the wife of an official in the pontifical court.

How difficult it is to save the bark of reputation from the rocks of ignorance.

The end of doubt is the beginning of repose.

Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.

True, we love life, not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving. There is always some madness in love, but there is also always some reason in madness.

Sameness is the mother of disgust, variety the cure.

Books have led some to learning and others to madness.

The aged love what is practical while impetuous youth longs only for what is dazzling.
     - All from Francesco Petrarch, 1304 - 1374

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