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Who really said it

In His will is our peace

Written by Dante Alighieri 1265–1321 · Florentine poet, author of the Divine Comedy
Verified Free to reuse

This is a genuine line of Dante’s. It is verse 85 of Paradiso, Canto III — “E ’n la sua volontade è nostra pace” — spoken by the soul of Piccarda Donati in the Heaven of the Moon. “In His will is our peace” is the standard, faithful English rendering of that half-line.

Last verified 16 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“In His will is our peace” Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, Canto III, line 85 (c. 1316–1321)

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Provenance

The source

Work
The Divine Comedy — Paradiso, Canto III, line 85
Written
c. 1316–1321 (Paradiso, the third canticle)
Original
“E ’n la sua volontade è nostra pace”
Speaker
Piccarda Donati, in the Heaven of the Moon

E ’n la sua volontade è nostra pace:
ella è quel mare al qual tutto si move
ciò ch’ella crïa o che natura face.

“And in His will is our peace: it is that sea to which all things move, both what it creates and what nature makes.”

Piccarda answers Dante’s question of whether the souls in the lowest sphere of Heaven wish they were higher: they do not, because their will is wholly aligned with God’s. Matthew Arnold singled out the Italian line as a “touchstone” of the highest poetry.

Paradiso, Canto III — full text with English translation (A. S. Kline)

How we verified this

Public domain

Dante wrote the Paradiso around 1316–1321, so the original Italian is long in the public domain. “In His will is our peace” is the standard, near-verbatim literal English of a six-word half-line, and appears freely in public-domain sources (e.g. Matthew Arnold’s 1880 “The Study of Poetry”); it is not the distinctive expression of any single modern translator. A full modern verse translation of the whole poem, however, may itself be under copyright.

This reflects the original work, which is public domain. If your exact English wording comes from a specific modern translation, that translation may itself still be under copyright — check the edition you quote.

Fact-check

A note on wording

The attribution here is right — this is one of the genuine Dante lines. The only thing worth flagging is that the familiar English is a translation, so its exact wording shifts from edition to edition.

Dante Alighieri translation variant

The Italian is fixed — “E ’n la sua volontade è nostra pace” — but translators render it variously: “And his will is our peace” (Longfellow), “in his will is our peace” (Kline), and the compressed pull-quote form “In His will, our peace” that circulates on quote sites. All are faithful to the same line.

Bottom line: genuinely Dante — Paradiso III.85, spoken by Piccarda Donati. Only the English phrasing varies by translator; the line and its author are secure. See Wikipedia.

Context

Why it mattered

Piccarda’s answer resolves the central puzzle of Dante’s Heaven: if some souls stand nearer God than others, do the lower ones feel slighted? No, she says — in blessedness the will is so conformed to God’s that there is nothing left to want. Peace is not resignation but the disappearance of any gap between one’s own desire and the divine will.

The line became a touchstone of European letters. Matthew Arnold quoted it as an example of poetry of the very highest order, and T. S. Eliot returned to it in his essay on Dante — which is much of why a half-line from a fourteenth-century canto still circulates as a standalone maxim today.

In His will is our peace.

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Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Paradiso III — Italian & English (A. S. Kline)poetryintranslation.com

Full parallel text of Canto III showing the line in its surrounding tercet.
Dante Alighieri — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Sourced quotations from the Divine Comedy, including this verse under Paradiso.
Touchstone (metaphor) — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Records the Italian line and its standard English, citing Paradiso III.85.
The Divine Comedy — Project Gutenberggutenberg.org

Cary’s public-domain translation of the complete Divine Comedy, illustrated by Gustave Doré.
Dante Alighieri — Poetry Foundationpoetryfoundation.org

Biography and overview of Dante and the Divine Comedy.

The true author

About the author

Dante Alighieri

1265–1321 · Florentine poet, author of the Divine Comedy

Dante Alighieri was a Florentine poet whose three-part Divine Comedy (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso) is the founding masterwork of Italian literature. In Paradiso III he meets Piccarda Donati, a nun forced from her convent, who explains that the blessed feel no envy of higher souls because their wills rest wholly in God’s — the thought crystallised in this line. The verse echoes Augustine’s “our heart is restless until it rests in Thee.”

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, Canto III, line 85, in The Divine Comedy (c. 1316–1321): “E ’n la sua volontade è nostra pace” — standard English, “In His will is our peace.”

MLA (9th ed.)

Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy: Paradiso. Canto III, line 85, circa 1320.

APA (7th ed.)

Alighieri, D. (ca. 1320). Paradiso (Canto III, line 85).

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘In His will is our peace’?” Last verified 16 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/in-his-will-is-our-peace

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