Highlands Ranch High School - Mr. Sedivy
Highlands Ranch, Colorado

- World History -
Renaissance and Reformation Quotations
1300 - 1650

"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here!"

Dante Aligieri 1265 - 1321
Italian poet and author of The Divine Comedy

Dante, crowned with poet's laurel, opens his Divine Comedy
as souls struggle heavenward through Purgatory.

1321 Inscription at the entrance to Hell; From The Inferno:

"The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of great moral crises maintain their neutrality."

Dante's Divine Comedy, from The Inferno:

"A good painter is to paint two main things, namely men and the working of man's mind."

Leonardo da Vinci 1452 - 1519
Italian painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer:

"When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food and clothes."

Desiderius Erasmus 1466 - 1536
Dutch humanist:

"Men are always wicked at bottom unless they are made good by some compulsion."

Niccolo Machiavelli 1469 - 1527
Italian statesman and political philosopher,
Author of The Prince, 1532:

"For this is one of the ancientest laws among them; that no man shall be blamed for reasoning in the maintenance of his own religion."

Sir Thomas More 1478 - 1535
English statesman and writer.
He was executed for refusing to subscribe to
the Act of Supremacy, the repudiation of
papal authority over the Church of England.
From Utopia, book 2, 1516:

"I am more afraid of my own heart than of the Pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great Pope, Self."

Martin Luther 1483 - 1546
German leader of the Protestant Reformation:

"I have always found it best to appear to yield. Assume a seeming conformity to your husband's will, even attend mass, and you will more easily get the reins into your own hands."

Luther, on his death bed speaking to his wife:

"I am ripe stool and the world is one giagantic anus, and we are about to let go of each other."

Catherine de' Medici 1519 - 1589
Wife of one king of France, mother of three French kings.
Remark to the Queen of Navarre:

"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child."

William Shakespeare 1564 - 1616

English playwright and poet.
From King Lear:

"Sir Sedivy, where hast thou placed the quotes? Alas, good King Lear."

1. What Was the Renaissance?