Petrarch Quotes on Knowledge
Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374), conventionally regarded as the founder of Renaissance humanism, gave the early-modern recovery of classical learning its programmatic statement in the famous letters to Cicero and the great moral and historical works of the Latin corpus. On His Own Ignorance (1367) defends the rhetorical and moral conception of knowledge against the dialectical scholasticism Petrarch saw as the principal intellectual disease of the universities, and the surviving correspondence with Boccaccio and others articulates the corresponding ideal of the classical authors as living conversation partners across the centuries.
Quotes
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“Books have led some to learning and others to madness.”
As quoted in "Lifetime Speaker's Encyclopedia" (1962) by Jacob Morton Braude, p. 75 -
Attributed to Petrarch:
“I am alone, and the more I think, the less I know.”
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“It is better to will the good than to know the truth.”
As quoted in The Renaissance : Essays in Interpretation (1982) by André Chastel , p 107 -
“This age of ours consequently has let fall, bit by bit, some of the richest and sweetest fruits that the tree of knowledge has yielded; has thrown away the results of the vigils and labours of the most illustrious men of genius, things of more value, I am almost tempted to say, than anything else in the whole world.”
On the Scarcity of Copyists -
“On the Scarcity of Copyists”
This age of ours consequently has let fall, bit by bit, some of the richest and sweetest fruits that the tree of knowledge has yielded; has thrown away the results of the vigils and labours of the most illustrious men of genius, things of more value, I am almost tempted to say, than anything else in the whole world. -
“To-day I made the ascent of the highest mountain in this region, which is not improperly called Ventosum. My only motive was the wish to see what so great an elevation had to offer. I have had the expedition in mind for many years; for, as you know, I have lived in this region from infancy, having been cast here by that fate which determines the affairs of men. Consequently the mountain, which is visible from a great distance, was ever before my eyes, and I conceived the plan of some time doing what I have at last accomplished to-day.”
Letter to Dionigi di Borgo San Sepolcro (26 April 1336), "The Ascent of Mount Ventoux" in Familiar Letters as translated by James Harvey Robinson (1898); the name Mount Ventosum relates to it being a windy mountain. -
“To-day I made the ascent of the highest mountain in this region, which is not improperly called Ventosum. My only motive was the wish to see what so great an elevation had to offer. I have had the expedition in mind for many years; for, as you know, I have lived in this region from infancy, having been cast here by that fate which determines the affairs of men. Consequently the mountain, which is ”
Letter to Dionigi di Borgo San Sepolcro (26 April 1336), "The Ascent of Mount Ventoux" in Familiar Letters as translated by James Harvey Robinson (1898); the name Mount Ventosum relates to it being a windy mountain. -
“I rejoiced in my progress, mourned my weaknesses, and commiserated the universal instability of human conduct. I had well-nigh forgotten where I was and our object in coming; but at last I dismissed my anxieties, which were better suited to other surroundings, and resolved to look about me and see what we had come to see. The sinking sun and the lengthening shadows of the mountain were already war”
Letter to Dionigi di Borgo San Sepolcro (26 April 1336), as translated by James Harvey Robinson (1898) -
“My brother, waiting to hear something of St. Augustine 's from my lips, stood attentively by. I call him, and God too, to witness that where I first fixed my eyes it was written: "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."”
Letter to Dionigi di Borgo San Sepolcro (26 April 1336), as translated by James Harvey Robinson (1898) -
“De remediis utriusque fortunae (1354), Book II”
Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.