Quotes by Italian Authors - Page 26

Every true writer is like a bird; he repeats the same song, the same theme, all his life. For me, this theme as always been revolt.
Alberto Moravia
Visions and words go together only when inspirations connects them!
Rossana Condoleo
I assert that the art of sculpture, among all the arts connected with design, is at least seven times greater than any other, for the following reason: why, sir, a statue of true sculpture ought to have seven points of view, which ought all to boast equal excellence.
Benvenuto Cellini
Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.
Ezra Pound
Sport, properly directed, develops character, makes a person courageous, a generous loser, and a gracious victor; it refines the senses, gives intellectual penetration, and steels the will to endurance. It is not merely a physical development then. Sport, rightly understood, is an occupation of the whole person, and while perfecting the body as an instrument of the mind, it also makes the mind itself a more refined instrument for the search and communication of truth….
Pope Pius XII
Whatever people may say the fastidious formal manner of the upper classes is preferable to the slovenly easygoing behaviour of the common middle class. In moments of crisis the former know how to act the latter become uncouth brutes.
Cesare Pavese
The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.
Dante Alighieri
Be the flame, not the moth.
Giacomo Casanova
Just being alive should make you late for everything. In case you've never noticed, the dead are always on time.
Arlene Ang
The obstinacy on which power is based is never so fragile as in the moment of its triumph.
Italo Calvino
Everything around her was in a fog; the intense light that always shone in his aqua blue eyes was the only thing in focus, but it was suddenly unknown... different... almost embarrassing.
Mirella Muffarotto
There is no such thing as destiny. We ourselves shape our lives.
Giacomo Casanova
Reason itself is fallible, and this fallibility must find a place in our logic.
Nicola Abbagnano
No one knows, at sight a masterpiece.And give up verse, my boy,There's nothing in it.Likewise a friend of Bloughram's once advised me:Don't kick against the pricks,Accept opinion. The Nineties tried your gameAnd died, there's nothing in it.
Ezra Pound
If I love order, it's not the mark of a character subjected to an inner discipline, a repression of the instincts. In me the idea of an absolutely regular world, symmetrical and methodical, is associated with that first impulse and burgeoning of nature.The rest of your images that associate passion with disorder, love with intemperate overflow - river fire whirlpool volcano - are for me memories of nothingness and listlessness and boredom.
Italo Calvino
I could tell you, but you should never trust what someone says about themselves. It’s something you need to see for yourself.
Maria La Serra
It [Foucault's Pendulum] can be very comforting for people of my generation, who ate disappointment for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Umberto Eco
Every evening words, not stars, light the sky. No rest in life like life itself.
Umberto Saba
Don't be timid. You're a writer, use your role, test it, make something of it. These are decisive times, everything is turning upside down. Participate, be present.
Elena Ferrante
For Leopardi, unhappy hedonist that he was, what is unknown is always more attractive than what is known; hope and imagination are the only consolations for the disappointments and sorrows of experience. Man therefore projects his desire into infinity and feels pleasure only when he is able to imagine that this pleasure has no end.
Italo Calvino
As for those who state that it is thanks to a woman, the lady Eve, that man was expelled from paradise, my answer to them would be that man has gained far more through Mary than he ever lost through Eve.
Christine de Pizan
In love, all kinds of love, we wait. If I can't be your dawn, I will be your sunset!
Rossana Condoleo
Perfect behavior is born of complete indifference. Perhaps this is why we always love madly someone who treats us with indifference.
Cesare Pavese
These monstrous views ... these venomous teachings.
Pope Leo XIII
Night is a world lit by itself
Antonio Porchia
The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.
Galileo Galilei
As it is our nature to be more moved by hope than fear the example of one we see abundantly rewarded cheers and encourages us far more than the sight of many who have not been well treated disquiets us.
Francesco Guicciardini
Therefore a wise prince ought to adopt such a course that his citizens will always in every sort and kind of circumstance have need of the state and of him, and then he will always find them faithful.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say, 'How did he do it? He must be a genius!
Gian-Carlo Rota
But Ludmilla is always at least one step ahead of you. “I like to know that book exists that I will still be able to read…” she says, sure that existent objects, concrete albeit unknown, must correspond to the strength of her desire. How can you keep up with her, this woman who is always reading another book besides the one before her eyes, a book that does not yet exist, but which, since she wants it, cannot fail to exist?
Italo Calvino
What is love? There is nothing in the world, neither man nor Devil nor any thing, that I hold as suspect as love, for it penetrates the soul more than any other thing. Nothing exists that so fills and binds the heart as love does. Therefore, unless you have those weapons that subdue it, the soul plunges through love into an immense abyss.
Umberto Eco
And yet she was content to pair off with this dull young adventurer in the tarnished lace! It was, he supposed, the sort of thing to be expected of a sex that all philosophy had taught him to regard as the maddest part of a mad species.
Rafael Sabatini
Withersoever the wheel of Fortune turns, Virtue stands firm upon her feet.
Benvenuto Cellini
The sea of grief has no shores, no bottom; no one can sound its depths.
Primo Levi
I can hardly keep track of the things I don't know, but every now and then comes an ignorance that makes me nostalgic.
Erri De Luca
Lella York, the self-proclaimed queen of passive-aggressive behavior. [Lella's perceptive view of herself]
Maria Grazia Swan
Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.
Thomas Aquinas
The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.
Michelangelo Buonarroti
Never tell a mother how she has to raise her children and give no advice over their schooling, health or nutrition if you are not asked to.
Rossana Condoleo
Passion - eventually it cools.
Francesca Marciano
[A] person whose head is bowed and whose eyes are heavy cannot look at the light.
Christine de Pizan
The word connects the visible trace with the invisible thing, the absent thing, the thing that is desired or feared, like a frail emergency bridge flung over an abyss.
Italo Calvino
Overambitious projects may be objectionable in many fields, but not in literature. Literature remains alive only if we set ourselves immeasurable goals, far beyond all hope of achievement.
Italo Calvino
Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another's fear.
Umberto Eco
Creator of all things, true source of light and wisdom, origin of all being, graciously let a ray of your light penetrate the darkness of my understanding. Take from me the double darkness in which I have been born, an obscurity of sin and ignorance. Give me a keen understanding, a retentive memory, and the ability to grasp things correctly and fundamentally. Grant me the talent of being exact in my explanations and the ability to express myself with thoroughness and charm. Point out the beginning, direct the progress, and help in the completion.
Thomas Aquinas
They weren't smiling and were looking in opposite directions, but it was as if their bodies flowed smoothly into each other's, through their arms and fingers. . . . There was a shared space between their bodies, the confines of which were not well delineated, from which nothing seemed to be missing and in which the air seemed motionless, undisturbed.
Paolo Giordano
All Mattia saw was a shadow moving toward him. He instinctively closed his eyes and then felt Alice’s hot mouth on his, her tears on his cheek, or maybe they weren’t hers, and finally her hands, so light, holding his head still and catching all his thoughts and imprisoning them there, in the space that no longer existed between them.
Paolo Giordano
NON MI POSSO ABITUARE. NON MI POSSO ABITUARE AL RAGAZZO CHE DORME DI SOPRA, CHE MI TIENE STRETTA TUTTA LA NOTTE E DICE DI AMARMI, E DICE CHE NON AMERÀ MAI NESSUNO COME AMA ME. NON POSSO ABITUARMI A TUTTA QUESTA FELICITÀ CHE MI SCAVA IN PUNTI IRRAGGIUNGIBILI, CHE MI RENDE FRAGILE.
Valentina D'Urbano
We are just a certain quantity of cells, all of us!
Rossana Condoleo
... When Princes devote themselves rather to pleasure than to arms, they lose their dominions.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.
Leonardo da Vinci
The principle that first you try to solve your problems on your own and only turn to others as a last resort applies to friends. We have an obligation to show our friends that we are turning to them for a favor not because it happens to be convenient for us to do so but because of a compelling reason.
P.M. Forni
I know that you’re worried about me, but crushing my lungs isn’t going to help anyone.
Sara Massa
Here, on the edge of what we know, in contact with the ocean of the unknown, shines the mystery and beauty of the world. And it’s breathtaking.
Carlo Rovelli
He who never leaves his country is full of prejudices.
Carlo Goldoni
A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.
Leonardo da Vinci
Stand aside for a while and leave room for learning, observe carefully what children do, and then, if you have understood well, perhaps teaching will be different from before.
Loris Malaguzzi
We are all on stage, my dear. Sometimes we forget our lines, but luckily an offstage helper can whisper our lines to us until we get back on track.
Maria La Serra
But one afternoon Lila said softly that there was nothing that could eliminate the conflict between the rich and the poor. "Why?""Those who are on the bottom always want to be on top, those who are on top want to stay on top, and one way or another they always reach the point where they're kicking and spitting at each other.""That's exactly why problems should be resolved before violence breaks out.""And how? Putting everyone on top, putting everyone on the bottom?""Finding a point of equilibrium between the classes.""A point where? Those from the bottom meet those from the top in the middle?""Let's say yes.""And those on top will be willing to go down? And those on the bottom will give up on going any higher?""If people work to solve all problems well, yes. You're not convinced?""No. The classes aren't playing cards, they're fighting, and it's a fight to the death.
Elena Ferrante
This is hell. Today, in our times, hell must be like this. A huge, empty room: we are tired, standing on our feet, with a tap which drips while we cannot drink the water, and we wait for something which will certainly be terrible, and nothing happens and nothing continues to happen.
Primo Levi