Quotes by Italian Authors - Page 10

Beauty awakens the soul to act.
Dante Alighieri
…Marco’s answers and objections took their place in a discourse already proceeding on its own, in the Great Khan’s head. That is to say, between the two of them it did not matter whether questions and solutions were uttered aloud or whether each of the two went on pondering in silence. In fact, they were silent, their eyes half-closed, reclining on cushions, swaying in hammocks, smoking long amber pipes.Marco Polo imagined answering (or Kublai Khan imagined his answer) that the more one was lost in unfamiliar quarters of distant cities, the more one understood the other cities he had crossed to arrive there…
Italo Calvino
Western funerals: black hearses, and black horses, and fast-fading flowers. Why should black be the colour of death? Why not the colours of a sunset?
Daniele Varè
One gives way to the temptation, only to rise from it again, afterwards, with a great eagerness to reestablish one's dignity, as if it were a tombstone to place on the grave of one's shame, and a monument to hide and sign the memory of our weaknesses. Everybody's in the same case. Some folks haven't the courage to say certain things, that's all!THE STEP-DAUGHTER: All appear to have the courage to do them though.
Luigi Pirandello
...I could feel what was left of my soul just slipping away as I fed on that girl until she was totally and completely drained.
Daniele Lanzarotta
What does what we know or don't know have to do with the laws that govern the world?
Carlo Rovelli
You know what I think about violence. For me it is profoundly moral -more moral than compromises and transactions.
Benito Mussolini
Does a rake deserve to possess anything of worth, since he chases everything in skirts and then imagines he can successfully hide his shame by slandering [women in general]?
Christine de Pizan
The smallest feline is a masterpiece.
Leonardo da Vinci
Often the test of courage becomes rather to live than to die.
Vittorio Alfieri
Not at all. Cooking is cool. I’ll make you one shaped like the moon.”“Why the moon?”“Because you remind me of the moon,” he said, and looked into his bowl. Sarah blushed.
Daniela Sacerdoti
Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who stop to consider the antithesis; that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable.
Primo Levi
Maybe beauty had nothing to do with the garbage TV tried to sell us. It was more a matter of confidence. Either way, I had none.
Gaia B. Amman
I simply decided once and for all to liberate myself from the anxiety of notoriety and the urge to be a part of that circle of successful people, those who believe they have won who-knows-what
Elena Ferrante
The soul is like an uninhabited worldthat comes to life only whenGod lays His headagainst us.
Thomas Aquinas
Nations like individuals live and die but civilization cannot die.
Guiseppe Mazzini
The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery is of little worth.
Ezra Pound
Two mystic states can be dissociated: the ecstatic-beneficent-and-benevolent, contemplation of the divine love, the divine splendour with goodwill toward others.And the bestial, namely the fanatical, the man on fire with God and anxious to stick his snotty nose into other men's business or reprove his neighbour for having a set of tropisms different from that of the fanatic's, or for having the courage to live more greatly and openly.The second set of mystic states is manifest in scarcity economists, in repressors etc.The first state is a dynamism. It has, time and again, driven men to great living, it has given them courage to go on for decades in the face of public stupidity. It is paradisical and a reward in itself seeking naught further... perhaps because a feeling of certitude inheres in the state of feeling itself. The glory of life exists without further proof for this mystic.
Ezra Pound
People eat meat and think they will become strong as an ox, forgetting that the ox eats grass.
Pino Caruso
Nobody is so miserable as he who longs to be somebody other than the person he is.
Angelo Patri
In order to feel anything you need strength.
Anna Maria Ortese
Revenge hardly mends anything. The son of a bitch you want to crush does not exist. The son of a bitch is your own self.
E.E. Giorgi
I don't even know what my natural color is. Natural? What is natural? What is that? I do not believe in totally natural for women. For me, natural has something to do with vegetables
Donatella Versace
A human being becomes human not through the casual convergence of certain biological conditions, but through an act of will and love on the part of other people. If this is not the case, then humanity becomes — as it is already to a large extent — no more than a rabbit-warren. But this is no longer a “free-range” warren but a “battery” one, in the conditions of artificiality in which it lives, with artificial light and chemical feed.
Italo Calvino
Far graver is it to corrupt the faith that is the life of the soul than to counterfeit the money that sustains temporal life.
Saint Thomas Aquinas
Perhaps everything lies in knowing what words to speak, what actions to perform, and in what order and rhythm; or else someone's gaze, answer, gesture is enough; it is enough for someone to do something for the sheer pleasure of doing it, and for his pleasure to become the pleasure of others: at that moment, all spaces change, all heights, distances; the city is transfigured, becomes crystalline, transparent as a dragonfly.
Italo Calvino
Don't you ever get tired of reading?" she asked. "You could hardly be called good company! Don't you know that, with women, you're supposed to make conversation?" she added; her half smile was perhaps meant to be ironic, though to Amedeo, who at that moment would have paid anything rather than give up his novel, it seemed downright threatening.
Italo Calvino
Nothing which implies contradiction falls under the omnipotence of God.
Thomas Aquinas
For it is in giving that we receive.
Francis of Assisi
If you want to be saved look the face of your Christ.
Thomas Aquinas
I'm accustomed to thinking of literature as a search for knowledge; in order to move onto existential terrain I need to consider it in relation to anthropology, ethnology, and mythology.
Italo Calvino
I have offended God and mankind because my work didn't reach the quality it should have.
Leonardo da Vinci
Addio, Dann. Addio, piccolo signor Rail, che mi hai insegnato la vita. Avevi ragione tu: non siamo morti. Non è possibile morire vicino a te. Perfino Mormy ha aspettato che tu fossi lontano per farlo. Adesso sono io che vado lontano. E non sarà vicino a te che morirò. Addio, mio piccolo signore, che sognavi i treni e sapevi dov'era l'infinito. Tutto quel che c'era io l'ho visto, guardando te. E sono stata ovunque, stando con te. È una cosa che non riuscirò a spiegare mai a nessuno. Ma è così. Me la porterò dietro, e sarà il mio segreto più bello. Addio, Dann. Non pensarmi mai, se non ridendo. Addio.
Alessandro Baricco
It's better not to know authors personally, because the real person never corresponds to the image you form of him from reading his books.
Italo Calvino
Monsters don’t exist. It’s men you should be afraid of, not monsters.
Niccolò Ammaniti
Noi siam venuti al loco ov'i' t'ho dettoche tu vedrai le genti dolorosec'hanno perduto il ben de l'intelletto.We to the place have come, where I have told theeThou shalt behold the people dolorousWho have foregone the good of intellect.
Dante Alighieri
While there are certainly informational spillovers as ideas move from person to person, it is hard to see why in most instances they are not priced. Although it is possible to imagine examples such as the wheelbarrow where an idea cannot be used without revealing the secret, relatively few ideas are of this type. For copyrightable creations such as books, music, plays, movies and art, unpriced spillovers obviously play little role. A book, a CD or a work of art must be purchased before it can be used, and the creator is free to make use of his creation in the privacy of his home without revealing the secret to the public at large. Similarly with movies or plays. In all cases, the creation must effectively be purchased before the “secret” is revealed.
Michele Boldrin
Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear. It doesn't matter whether the good writer wants to be useful, or whether the good writer wants to be harm.
Ezra Pound
Atât de mare e puterea adevărului care, precum binele, se răspândește de la sine.
Umberto Eco
A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.
Carlo M. Cipolla
And here comes in the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both; but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.
Niccolò Machiavelli
But confining myself more to the particular, I say that a prince may be seen happy to-day and ruined to-morrow without having shown any change of disposition or character. This, I believe, arises firstly from causes that have already been discussed at length, namely, that the prince who relies entirely upon fortune is lost when it changes. I believe also that he will be successful who directs his actions according to the spirit of the times, and that he whose actions do not accord with the times will not be successful. Because men are seen, in affairs that lead to the end which every man has before him, namely, glory and riches, to get there by various methods; one with caution, another with haste; one by force, another by skill; one by patience, another by its opposite; and each one succeeds in reaching the goal by a different method. One can also see of two cautious men the one attain his end, the other fail; and similarly, two men by different observances are equally successful, the one being cautious, the other impetuous; all this arises from nothing else than whether or not they conform in their methods to the spirit of the times. This follows from what I have said, that two men working differently bring about the same effect, and of two working similarly, one attains his object and the other does not.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Where the willingness is great the difficulties cannot be great.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. You must be able to sustain yourself against staggering blows. There is no code of conduct to help beginners. That is why some people with mediocre talent but with great inner drive go much further than people with vastly superior talent.
Sophia Loren
What a man dares to do, he should dare to confess- unless he is a coward.
Rafael Sabatini
What causes love, since it is a passion, is its object; and since it is a sort of affinity or agreement with the object, what causes love is the goodness or agreeableness of that object. Evil can only be loved because it seems good, because being partially good it is perceived as wholly so. And the beautiful is a form of the good: if something is agreeable in general we call it good, and if the perception of it is agreeable we call it beautiful. But goodness must be known before it can become the object of love, so knowledge itself can be said to cause love. Knowing is an activity of reason, which abstracts from things and then makes connections between them, needing to know each part and property and power of things if it is to know them perfectly. But loving is an appetite for things as they stand, and to love perfectly we need only love them as they are perceived to exist in themselves.
Thomas Aquinas
The foolish rush to end their lives.Only the steadfast soul survives.
Christine de Pizan
A high heart ought to bear calamities and not flee them since in bearing them appears the grandeur of the mind and in fleeing them the cowardice of the heart.
Pietro Aretino
The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.
Niccolò Machiavelli
By nature man without woman can feel no joy. She is his mother, his sister, his loving friend. She is seldom his enemy.
Christine de Pizan
When evening comes, I go back home, and go to my study. On the threshold I take off my work clothes, covered in mud and filth, and put on the clothes an ambassador would wear. Decently dressed, I enter the ancient courts of rulers who have long since died. There I am warmly welcomed, and I feed on the only food I find nourishing, and was born to savor. I am not ashamed to talk to them, and to ask them to explain their actions. And they, out of kindness, answer me. Four hours go by without my feeling any anxiety. I forget every worry. I am no longer afraid of poverty, or frightened of death. I live entirely through them.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Each of us, face to face with other men, is clothed with some sort of dignity, but we know only too well all the unspeakable things that go on in the heart.
Luigi Pirandello
Not all men (and especially the wisest) share the opinion that it is bad for women to be educated. But it is very true that many foolish men have claimed this because it displeased them that women knew more than they did.
Christine de Pizan
I'd lost all faith in everything, except for the certainty that there's always someone behind our backs waiting to deceive us.
Umberto Eco
Materialists deny God because they can't smell a rose with a telescope.
Adriano Bulla
Eva’s only fault has been the one of wanting to know more, to experiment and search with her own sources the laws of the Universe, of her own body and to refuse the teachings from “above”. Eva, basically, represents the curiosity of science against the passive acceptance that belongs to faith.
Margherita Hack
The search for a new personality is futile what is fruitful is the interest the old personality can take in new activities.
Cesare Pavese
This was the end of the Renaissance. Culture, once beloved and fostered by the papacy, opened the way to dangerous freedom. Then - as now - knowledge, culture, intellectual curiosity became suspect, even dangerous to oppressive regimes: knowledge leading to engaging the mind into reasoning, culture into wanting to know more, intellectual curiosity sharpening the appetite for information, fact. Ignorance was considered safe and political oppression went hand in hand with the congregation of the Inquisition.
Gaia Servadio
Establishing lasting peace is the work of education all politics can do is keep us out of war.
Maria Montessori
Only those means of security are good are certain are lasting that depend on yourself and your own vigor.
Niccolò Machiavelli