Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Pietro Arentino

Italian Renaissance Satirist, Author and Poet

"I love you and, because I love you, I would sooner have you hate me for telling you the truth than adore me for telling you lies."

"I am, indeed, a king, because I know how to rule myself."

"A high heart ought to bear calamities and not flee them, since in bearing them appears the grandeur of the mind and in fleeing them the cowardice of the heart."

"I keep my friends as misers do their treasure, because, of all the things granted us by wisdom, none is greater or better than friendship."

"Nothing, it appears to me is of greater value in a man than the power of judgment and the man who has it may be compared to a chest filled with books, for he is the son of nature and the father of art."

"They merit more praise who know how to suffer misery than those who temper themselves in contentment."

"A man who permits his honor to be taken, permits his life to be taken."

"Age has a good mind and sorry shanks."

"Anger represents a certain power, when a great mind, prevented from executing its own generous desires, is moved by it."

"Desire is poison at lunch and wormwood at dinner; your bed is a stone, friendship is hateful and your fancy is always fixed on one thing."

"Flattery and deceit are the darlings of great men, and so with these men spread the butter on thick, if you want to get something out of them, otherwise you'll come home to me with a full belly and an empty purse."

"Flee laziness, which, while it produces an immediate delight, ends in the sorrow of repentance. And know that nature without exercise is a seed shut up in the pod, and art without practice is nothing."

"He who has not been at a tavern knows not what a paradise it is. O holy tavern! O miraculous tavern! ? holy, because no carking cares are there, nor weariness, nor pain; and miraculous, because of the spits, which themselves turn round and round!"

"I am a free man. I do not need to copy Petrarca or Boccaccio. My own genius is enough. Let others worry themselves about style, and so cease to be themselves. Without a master, without a model, without a guide, I go to work and earn my living, my well-being and my fame."

"If you want to annoy your neighbors, tell the truth about them."

"Inside, there was a long rigmarole that went on and on; it began with my hair, which had been cut off in the church, and said that he had gathered it together and made a neckband of it for himself; and my forehead was clearer than a cloudless sky. He compared my eyebrows to the black wood which is used to make combs, and he said that my cheeks were so white that they filled milk and cream with envy. He declared my teeth were like a row of pearls, and my lips like pomegranate blossoms; he composed a great preamble on my hands - he even praised my fingernails; and he said that my voice was like the canticle 'Gloria in eccelsis'; and when he came to my breasts, he waxed positively ecstatic - they displayed two apples as white and shining as the snow in sunlight. Finally he allowed himself to slip down to the fountain, saying that he had drunk from it all unworthily, and that it distilled nectar and manna, and that the curls of hair round it were made of silk."

"Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius."

"Perugia is my true fatherland because there I grew to manhood."

"Angry men are blind and foolish, for reason at such a time takes flight and, in her absence, wrath plunders all the riches of the intellect, while the judgment remains the prisoner of its own pride."

"Poetry is a whim of Nature in her lighter moods; it requires nothing but its own madness and, lacking that, it becomes a soundless cymbal, a belfry without a bell."

"The art of war is like the art of the courtesan ? indeed, they might be called sisters, since both are the slaves of desperation."

"The best thing for a man to do is to be born and, being born, to die at once."

"There is no food more satiating than milk and honey; and just as such foods produce disgust for the palate, so perfumed and gallant words make our ears belch."

"We are the buffoons of our children."

"What evil is there in seeing a man possess a woman? Why, the beasts would be more free than we! It seems to me that that which is given us by nature for our own preservation ought to be worn round the neck as a pendant and in the hat for a medal."

"Life is a toy made of glass; it appears to be of inestimable price, but in reality it is very cheap."

"Learning is the property of those who fear to do disagreeable things."

"Nature without exercise is a seed shut up in a pod, and art without practice is nothing."

"Why should the eyes be denied what delights them most?"

"With a goose-quill and a few sheets of paper, I mock myself of the universe. They say I am the son of a courtesan; it may be so, but I have the heart of a King. I live free, I enjoy myself, I can call myself happy."

"Why should I be ashamed to describe what nature was not ashamed to create?"