Authors / Dante Alighieri

Dante Alighieri quotes

1265–1321 · Italian poet, author of the Divine Comedy

Dante's tour of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise shaped how Europe imagined the afterlife. We quote H. F. Cary's and H. W. Longfellow's 19th-century translations.

2 real · 1 not theirs

Really theirs

2 quotes traced to Dante Alighieri's own work or a reliable witness.

Sourced

All hope abandon, ye who enter here.

The inscription over the gate of Hell.

Source: Inferno III.9, tr. H. F. Cary

Sourced

Ye were not made to live like unto brutes, but for pursuit of virtue and of knowledge.

Source: Inferno XXVI.119–120, tr. H. W. Longfellow

Not theirs

1 famous lines credited to Dante Alighieri that are misquoted, unsourced or belong to someone else.

Not theirs

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.

Actually: Popularised by John F. Kennedy, who credited Dante. The Inferno does put the neutral in Hell's vestibule, but this sentence is not in the poem.