“What we stubbornly pursue slips away, while what comes more easily is usually not so important to us”;

“Follow your own road, and let other people say what they will”;

“Remember that this day will never come again”;

“People often drift with the current of time! Yet our frail little boat is fitted with a rudder; so why does a man hurtle along with the waves instead of yielding to his own aspirations?”

“Deceit and force are the instruments of the wicked”;

“Love moves the Sun and the other stars”;

“It is time you learned that at the start of a climb every mountain seems steep. But the higher we go, the easier the path becomes little by little, and the trail that once drained us suddenly turns light”;

“Whoever does not surrender is invincible”;

“Fear must not command the mind; otherwise we shrink from what we might achieve”;

“Only the unknown frightens us; we fear what we have not yet touched.”

(Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) was an Italian poet, thinker, theologian and statesman, and one of the founders of literary Italian. In the medieval struggle between the Guelphs (papal supporters) and the Ghibellines (monarchists) he sided with the latter. After the Guelph party triumphed in his native Florence he was forced to give up a high political office and go into exile. During his wanderings through Italy he wrote his chief work, the “Divine Comedy” (1307–1321), which first appeared in print in 1472. The “Divine Comedy” is a synthesis of late medieval culture and one of the foundational works of Western literature. The quotations are taken from the “Divine Comedy”.)