Worldly renown is naught but a breath of wind, which now comes this way and now comes that, and changes name because it changes quarter.

The line comes from Dante’s Purgatorio, where Dante (the pilgrim) and Virgil encounter the proud on the first terrace of Mount Purgatory. In this canticle Dante repeatedly contrasts the fleeting nature of earthly fame with the enduring reality of moral and spiritual transformation. The passage is part of a broader meditation on “fama” (renown) as something unstable and contingent—dependent on public opinion, political fortune, and the shifting “winds” of rumor. Dante, himself a politically exiled Florentine deeply entangled in questions of reputation and legacy, frames worldly glory as especially deceptive for those tempted by pride.

Dante reduces worldly renown to something as insubstantial as moving air: it has no permanence, no substance, and no reliable direction. The image of the wind changing “quarter” suggests that fame is governed by external forces—fashion, faction, and chance—rather than by truth or merit. That it “changes name” underscores how reputation is re-labeled and rewritten by later voices; even a celebrated name can be revised, diminished, or replaced. In the moral economy of Purgatorio, this critique targets pride: if fame is so volatile, building one’s identity on it is both irrational and spiritually dangerous.