Quotes by Italian Authors - Page 14

Freedom is for the curious ones. Free is the one not influenced by taboos. Free is the one who reasons and evolves continuously, and refuses to accept anything without thinking.
Massimo Marino
There is one basic cause of all effects.
Giordano Bruno
The verb 'to darn' is explained in my pocket dictionary as follows: 'To mend by imitating the texture of the stuff, with thread and needle.' But this definition does not correspond to the work accomplished by good Chinese housewives. When they mend a sock, they do not try 'to imitate the texture of the stuff'. Their art makes no attempt at concealment: it even takes a certain pride in revealing itself.
Daniele Varè
Jealousy is a fever that arises from a stupid, baseless excitement in our unthinking brain.Jealousy is a phenomenon of auto-suggestion.The woman you love has gone to bed with X. You hate X, you hate her, and you have perpetually before your eyes the vision of your loved one and X embracing in an act that fills you with horror.But you too in your time have deceived the woman you love and have done with Y what X did in bed with woman you love.Well, what remains in your skin ,your mind of Mrs Y? Nothing whatever. No more than X left with your woman.In other words, auto suggestion. Do you want evidence of that? Well, then, if you don't know the man, you imagine him to be hateful, offensive, repulsive, and you feel that if you met him you'd kill him.But, if you happen to see his photograph, you begin to realize that it's possible to look at him without horror; and believe me, if you were actually introduced to him you'd approach him with a cordial smile on your lips, look him in the eye without trembling and, if you have reached my degree of perfection, you'd actually be capable of cheerfully patting him on the back and telling him he's a good chap.In a not too distant future, reason and education will have driven home the lesson of the futility of jealousy.
Pitigrilli
As a result of subduing the forces of nature with the tools that we invent, we find ourselves today at the point where the force of our tools has become a greater concern than the forces of nature.
Elena Ferrante
No thought is born in me that does not bear the image of death.
Michelangelo Buonarroti
Wisdom consists in being able to distinguish among dangers and make a choice of the least harmful.
Niccolò Machiavelli
The end of pain we take as happiness.
Giacomo Leopardi
Discipline is the great equalizer. If a young woman is beautiful but has no discipline, she will lose her looks as she grows older. If a plain woman is disciplined she will undoubtedly become more beautiful with time.
Sophia Loren
But as to your writing me that I don’t love you very much, I don’t know whether you’re saying this in earnest or whether I should realise that you’re joking with me. Still, what you say disturbs me. You are measuring a very healthy expression of a wife’s loyalty by the standard of the insincere flattery of well-worn phrases. But I shall love you, my husband. What does it mean to you that you reassure me with those trivial little compliments? Do you want me to believe that you expect me to comb my hair in a stylish fashion for your homecoming? Or to feign adoring looks with a painted face? Let women without means, who worry and have no confidence in their virtue, flutter their eyelashes and play games to gain favour with their husbands. This is the adulation of a fox and the birdlime of deceitful bird hunting. I don’t want to have to buy you at such a price. I’m not a person who lays more stock in words than duty. I am truly your Laura, whose soul is the same one you in turn had hoped for.
Laura Cereta
It pleased him to see that things, and not only people, suffered the wear and tear of age. [53 yr old Inspector Bordelli's view]
Marco Vichi
But why, everybody asks, am I not blessed by fortune (or at least not as blessed as I would like to be)? Why have I not been favored like others who are less deserving? No one believes their misfortunes are attributable to any shortcomings of their own; that is why they must find a culprit.
Umberto Eco
From the beginning, when something was wrong I've been saying: 'Dilly-ding, dilly-dong, wake up, wake up!' So on Christmas Day I bought for all the players and all the staff a little bell. It was just a joke.
Claudio Ranieri
Admittedly, art is somewhat like spit. It does not repulse or even worry is while it is still inside of us, but once it exits our body, it becomes disgusting.
Ivan Brunetti
Although the view that, once discovered, ideas can be imitated for free by anybody is pervasive, it is far from the truth. While it may occasionally be the case that an idea is acquired at no cost—ideas are generally difficult to communicate, and the resources for doing so are limited. It is rather ironic that a group of economists, who are also college professors and earn a substantial living teaching old ideas because their transmission is neither simple nor cheap, would argue otherwise in their scientific work. Most of the times imitation requires effort and, what is more important, imitation requires purchasing either some products or some teaching services from the original innovator, meaning that most spillovers are priced.
Michele Boldrin
A well-spent day brings happy sleep.
Leonardo da Vinci
The body is not a product. It is an experience.
Daniele Bolelli
…how it would be nice if, for every sea waiting for us, there would be a river, for us. And someone -a father, a lover, someone- able to take us by the hand and find that river -imagine it, invent it- and put us on its stream, with the lightness of one only word, goodbye. This, really, would be wonderful. It would be sweet, life, every life. And things wouldn’t hurt, but they would get near taken by stream, one could first shave and then touch them and only finally be touched. Be wounded, also. Die because of them. Doesn’t matter. But everything would be, finally, human. It would be enough someone’s fancy -a father, a lover, someone- could invent a way, here in the middle of the silence, in this land which don’t wanna talk. Clement way, and beautiful.A way from here to the sea.
Alessandro Baricco
Her breast was young, the nipples rosy. Cosimo just grazed it with his lips, before Viola slid away over the branches as if she were flying, with him clambering after her, and that skirt of hers always in his face
Italo Calvino
Thunder erupted over head as I watched him go. I felt the rain start to hit my head, getting me soaked in an instant. Before he went into his house, he turned back one more time and looked at me with those sad eyes. “Looks like you have your storm.” And then he was gone, leaving me standing out in the rain.
Sara Massa
Soldiers strike the foe in the face!
Florus
Because in this way all I did was to accumulate past after past behind me, multiplying the pasts, and if one life was too dense and ramified and embroiled for me to bear it always with me, imagine so many lives, each with its own past and the pasts of the other lives that continue to become entangled one with the others.
Italo Calvino
Fair and unfair are for children
Michelle Lovric
The revolution is now just a sentiment.
Pier Paolo Pasolini
The blessed in the kingdom of heaven will see the punishments of the damned, in order that their bliss be more delightful for them.
Thomas Aquinas
What did the Romans say? “De gustibus non est disputandum”: It is worthless to discuss personal taste. It is called 'personal' for a reason.
Massimo Marino
The constant talker will never, or a least rarely, grasp truth. Of course even he must experience some truths, otherwise he could not exist. He does notice certain facts, observe certain relations, draw conclusions and make plans. But he does not yet possess genuine truth, which comes into being only when the essence of an object, the significance of a relaton, and what is valid and eternal in this world reveal themselves. This requires the spacousness, freedom, and pure receptiveness of that inner “clean-swept room” whilch silence alone can create
Romano Guardini
The soul exists partly in eternity and partly in time.
Marsilio Ficino
Life is a very sad piece of buffoonery because we have ... the need to fool ourselves continuously by the spontaneous creation of a reality ... which from time to time reveals itself to be vain and illusory.
Luigi Pirandello
Never forget that the way which leads to heaven is narrow; that the gate leading to life is narrow and low; that there are but few who find it and enter by it; and if there be some who go in and tread the narrow path for some time, there are but very few who persevere therein.
St. Clare of Assisi
People are ridiculous only when they try or seem to be that which they are not.
Giacomo Leopardi
Philosophy [nature] is written in that great book which ever is before our eyes -- I mean the universe -- but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. The book is written in mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.
Galileo Galilei
Questions that pertain to the foundations of mathematics, although treated by many in recent times, still lack a satisfactory solution. Ambiguity of language is philosophy's main source of problems. That is why it is of the utmost importance to examine attentively the very words we use.
Giuseppe Peano
He stood there watching for a moment, not able to move. Even with her mascara running down her face and her hair beginning to frizz, she was still by far the most beautiful girl he’d ever laid eyes on. It was quite simple, wasn’t it? This great affection he had for Olivia was so overwhelming he chose to walk away instead of being brutally honest with himself.
Maria La Serra
A person, for example, reads in adulthood a book that is important for him, and it makes him say, "How could I have lived without reading it!" and also, "What a pity I did not read it in my youth!" Well, these statements do not have much meaning, especially the second, because after he has read that book, his life becomes the life of a person who has read that book, and it is of little importance whether he read it early or late, because now his life before that reading also assumes a form shaped by that reading.
Italo Calvino
How clear everything becomes when you look from the darkness of a dungeon!
Umberto Eco
All hope abandon, ye who enter here.
Dante Alighieri
A thought, no matter how small and forgotten, always has an eternal impact on the Cosmos. Most times, we can only see the material and just about beyond the immediate, but if we could trace this thought through all Creation... well, it would be a whole universe in itself.
Adriano Bulla
Normal....What the majority of people look, act, and talk and like.So what if the majority became what we see as wierd now?Would our normal, become our new wierd?
Catherine of Genoa
Reciprocal marketing, promotions and links. In public good experiments, behavioral economists have demonstrated that the potential for reciprocal actions by players increases the rate of contribution to the public good, providing evidence for the importance of reciprocity in social situations.
Carl William Brown
I await your sentence with less fear than you pass it. The time will come when all will see what I see.
Giordano Bruno
Tacit collaboration by millions whobite their lip is even more essential than lip service by thousands of favor seekers. Hence, to stimulate at least passive cooperation, the party strives to give the impression that “everybody” is already on its side. (The Rise of Political Correctness)
Angelo Codevilla
Armour belonging to someone else either chops off you or weighs you down or is too tight
Niccolò Machiavelli
We must not wish anything other than what happens from moment to moment all the while however exercising ourselves in goodness.
Saint Catherine of Genoa
Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.
Leonardo da Vinci
There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.
Sophia Loren
You do not carry the cross. Instead you are all crucified on the timber of your sufficiency, which is given to you, the more you insist, the more you bleed: it suits you to say you carry the cross like a sacred duty, whereas you are heavy with the weight of your necessities. Have the courage not to admit those necessities and lift yourselves up for your own sakes.
Carlo Michelstaedter
Water is the driving force in nature.
Leonardo da Vinci
Why d’you make me suffer?"“Because I love you.”Now it was his turn to get angry. “No, no, you don’t love me! People in love want happiness, not pain!”“People in love want only love, even at the cost of pain.”“Then you’re making people suffer on purpose.”“Yes, to see if you love me.”The Baron’s philosophy would not go any further. “Pain is a negative state of the soul.” “Love is all.” “Pain should always be fought against.”“Love refuses nothing.”“Some things I’ll never admit.”“Oh yes, you do, now, for you love me and you suffer.
Italo Calvino
In the case of patentable ideas such as the wheelbarrow, the idea of unpriced spillovers is more plausible. Yet there is no reason to believe that it is of practical importance. Indeed, there is a modern example of the wheelbarrow – that of Travelpro – the inventor of the modern wheeled roll-on suitcase with a retractable handle. Obviously such an idea can not both be useful and be secret – and once you see a wheeled roll-on suitcase it is not difficult to figure out how to make one of your own. Needless to say, Travelpro was quickly imitated – and so quickly you probably have never even heard of Travelpro. Never-the-less – despite their inability to garner an intellectual monopoly over their invention – they found it worthwhile to innovate – and they still do a lucrative business today, claiming “425,000 Flight Crew Members Worldwide Choose Travelpro Luggage.
Michele Boldrin
And St. Francis said: 'My dear son, be patient, because the weaknesses of the body are given to us in this world by God for the salvation of the soul. So they are of great merit when they are borne patiently.
Francis of Assisi
Any fact becomes important when it's connected to another.
Umberto Eco
It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Ideas and opinions are not spontaneously "born" in each individual brain: they have had a centre of formation, or irradiation, of dissemination, of persuasion-a group of men, or a single individual even, which has developed them and presented them in the political form of current reality.
Antonio Gramsci
Wisdom is the daughter of experience
Leonardo da Vinci
Obstacles cannot crush me every obstacle yields to stern resolve.
Leonardo da Vinci
Most people — however much they might deny it — had an idea of what they were getting into when they got into it.
Donna Leon
Getting lost is the only place worth going to.
Tiziano Scarpa
Her nausea increased, the dialect had become unfamiliar, the way our wet throats bathed the words in the liquid of saliva was intolerable. A sense of repulsion had invested all the bodies in movement, their bone structure, the frenzy that shook them. How poorly made we are, she thought, how insufficient. The broad shoulders, the arms, the legs, the ears, noses, eyes, seemed to her attributes of monstrous beings who had fallen from some corner of the black sky.
Elena Ferrante
I felt that not only in my book but in novels in general there was something that truly agitated me, a bare and throbbing heart . . . But was that what I wanted? To write, to write with purpose, to write better than I had already? And to study the stories of the past and the present to understand how they worked, and to learn, learn everything about the world with the sole purpose of constructing living hearts . . .
Elena Ferrante