Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanist. Born in the town of Certaldo, he became so well known as a writer that he was sometimes simply known as “the Certaldese”[nb 2] and one of the most important figures in the European literary panorama of the fourteenth century. Some scholars (including Vittore Branca) define him as the greatest European prose writer of his time, a versatile writer who amalgamated different literary trends and genres, making them converge in original works, thanks to a creative activity exercised under the banner of experimentalism.

Giovanni Boccaccio Quotes

1. “In this world, you only get what you grab for.”
— Giovanni Boccaccio

2. “It’s better to repent what you enjoyed than to repent not having enjoyed anything.”
— Giovanni Boccaccio

3. “Much is required of those who are happy, especially if they have needed comforting in the past, and have received it.”
— Giovanni Boccaccio

4. “To have compassion for those who suffer is a human quality which everyone should possess, especially those who have required comfort themselves in the past and have managed to find it in others.”
— Giovanni Boccaccio

5. “Nothing is so indecent that it cannot be said to another person if the proper words are used to convey it.”
— Giovanni Boccaccio

6. “While farmers generally allow one rooster for ten hens, ten men are scarcely sufficient to service one woman.”
— Giovanni Boccaccio

7. “Kissed mouth don’t lose its fortune, on the contrary it renews itself just as the moon does.”
— Giovanni Boccaccio

8. “My mind is wholly possessed by Love, who rules every part there of, in virtue of his all-embracing deity.”
— Giovanni Boccaccio

9. “No-thing less splendid than a golden sepulchre would have suited so noble a heart.”
— Giovanni Boccaccio

10. “People tend to believe the bad rather than the good.”
— Giovanni Boccaccio

11. “Wrongs committed in the distant past are far easier to condemn than to rectify.”
— Giovanni Boccaccio

12. “They brought it to a common saying there that the most acceptable service one could render to God was to put the devil in Hell.”
— Giovanni Boccaccio

13. “Heaven would indeed be heaven if lovers were there permitted as much enjoyment as they had experienced on earth.”
— Giovanni Boccaccio

14. “In the affairs of this world, poverty alone is without envy.”
— Giovanni Boccaccio

15. “Human it is to have compassion on the unhappy.”
— Giovanni Boccaccio

16. “Of women he was as fond as dogs of the stick; but in the contrary he delighted more than any filthy fellow alive.”
— Giovanni Boccaccio

17. “Let this grisly beginning be none other to you than is to wayfarers a rugged and steep mountain.”
— Giovanni Boccaccio

18. “No one will ever know it and a sin that’s hidden is half forgiven.”
— Giovanni Boccaccio

19. “Senseless creatures, you don’t see how much evil is concealed under a little good appearance.”
— Giovanni Boccaccio

20. “My story, gracious ladies, will not be of folk of so high a rank as those of whom Elisa has told us, but perchance ’twill not be less touching. ‘Tis brought to my mind by the recent mention of Messina, where the matter befell.”
— Giovanni Boccaccio

21. “He was a terrible blasphemer of God and the saints, and that for every trifle, being the most choleric man alive.”
— Giovanni Boccaccio

22. “My friends, you constrain me unto that which I was altogether resolved never to do, considering how hard a thing it is to find a wife whose fashions sort well within one’s own humour and how great an abundance there is of the contrary sort and how dour a life is his who happeneth upon a woman not well suited unto him.”
— Giovanni Boccaccio

23. “Thus, it is quite clear that things which the natural course of events, with its small, infrequent blows, could never teach the wise to bear with patience, the immensity of this calamity made even simple people regard with indifference.”
— Giovanni Boccaccio

24. “I have lost my pains, which meseemed I had right well bestowed, thinking to have converted this man; for that, an he go to the court of Rome and see the lewd and wicked life of the clergy, not only will he never become a Christian, but, were he already a Christian, he would infallibly turn Jew again.”
— Giovanni Boccaccio

25. “Whenever they are reproached for such actions and for the many other disgraceful things they do, they think they can unload the heaviest charges by replying, ‘Do as we say and not as we do’ – as if constancy and steadfast behavior came more easily to the sheep than to their shepherds.”
— Giovanni Boccaccio

26. “He thought that Abraham would never become a Christian once he had seen the Papal Court; but, since it was useless, he gave up trying to dissuade him.”
— Giovanni Boccaccio

27. “I purpose to relate to you of a marquess, not an act of magnificence, but a monstrous folly, which, albeit good ensued to him thereof in the end, I counsel not any to imitate, for it was a thousand pities that weal betided him thereof.”
— Giovanni Boccaccio