Dante Alighieri 1265 - 1321
Italian writer and poet
- "Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'intrate."
- Translation: "Abandon all hope, whoever enters here."
- Source: Inscribed above the gates of Hell (Inferno III:9).
- "Il gran rifiuto."
- Translation: "The great refusal."
- Source: The decision of Pope Celestine V to abdicate the Papacy and allow Dante's enemy, Pope Boniface VIII , to gain power (Inferno III).
- "L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle."
- Translation: "The love which moves the sun and the other stars."
- Source: Dante's final vision in the Divine Comedy (last line of Paradiso XXXIII).
"I want my illustrations for the Dante to be like the faint markings of moisture in a divine cheese. . . .Mysticism is cheese; Christ is cheese, better still, mountains of cheese!" -Salvador Dali
Falsely attributed
- "The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crisis maintain their neutrality", or a variation on that.
- Source: Probably John F. Kennedy [1]. (Dante placed those who "non furon ribelli né fur fedeli" — were neither for nor against God, such as Celestine V, above — in a special region near the mouth of Hell; the lowest part of Hell, a lake of ice, was for traitors.)
