Quotes by Italian Authors - Page 3

It is immoral to hold an opinion in order to curry another's favor; mercenary, servile, and against the dignity of human liberty to yield and submit; supremely stupid to believe as a matter of habit; irrational to decide according to the majority opinion, as if the number of sages exceeded the infinite number of fools.
Giordano Bruno
Mathematics is the study of analogies between analogies. All science is. Scientists want to show that things that don't look alike are really the same. That is one of their innermost Freudian motivations. In fact, that is what we mean by understanding.
Gian-Carlo Rota
Sexuality and anger are often written with the same note, but never on the same line, because they don’t make music together.
Sibyl von der Schulenburg
It is necessary to have “watchers” at hand who will bear witness to the values of Tradition in ever more uncompromising and firm ways, as the anti-traditional forces grow in strength. Even though these values cannot be achieved, it does not mean that they amount to mere “ideas.” These are MEASURES…. Let people of our time talk about these things with condescension as if they were anachronistic and anti-historical; we know that this is an alibi for their defeat. Let us leave modern men to their “truths” and let us only be concerned about one thing: to keep standing amid a world of ruins.
Julius Evola
Maybe you who condemn me are in greater fear than I who am condemned.
Giordano Bruno
Love is a great poet its resources are inexhaustible but if the end it has in view is not obtained it feels weary and remains silent.
Giacomo Casanova
You two are bound to one another. You always have been … and you can't run away from what you are. No matter where you go, your feelings for her are going to follow you.
Mirella Muffarotto
Self-development is a contradiction in terms Personal development is the way.
Frank Ra (Exstatica)
In this world, you only get what you grab for.
Giovanni Boccaccio
National identity is the last bastion of the dispossessed. But the meaning of identity is now based on hatred, on hatred for those who are not the same.
Umberto Eco
In the years when I discoverd the Abbé Vallet volume, there was a widespread conviction that one should write only out of a commitment to the present, in order to change the world. Now, after ten years or more, the man of letters (restored to his loftiest dignity) can happily write out of pure love of writing.
Umberto Eco
I always introduce myself as an encyclopedia of defects which I do not deny. Why should I? It took me a whole life to build myself as I am.
Oriana Fallaci
It takes just one wave to capsize a boat, and one more to take it down.
Federico Chini
Aloneness and all-oneness is our authentic nature. We are always alone and all-one. We came into this planet alone and all-one. We will leave alone and all-one. And also during our whole staying in this world, no matter how we engage in relationships, we continue to be alone and all-one, though we may forget about it or pretend it is not the case.True love has nothing to do with the idea that someone is the other half of my soul and that I need him or her in order to be whole and feel complete. Only when we can be alone and all-one with someone there is true love, regardless of whether that someone is still with us or not.And yet... I miss you...
Franco Santoro
And all the while one spirit uttered this,The other one did weep so, that, for pity,I swooned away as if I had been dying,And fell, even as a dead body falls.
Dante Alighieri
Thus it is well to seem merciful, faithful, humane, sincere, religious, and also to be so; but you must have the mind so disposed that when it is needful to be otherwise you may be able to change to the opposite qualities. And it must be understood that a prince, and especially a new prince, cannot observe all those things which are considered good in men, being often obliged, in order to maintain the state, to act against faith, against charity, against humanity, and against religion. And, therefore, he must have a mind disposed to adapt itself according to the wind, and as the variations of fortune dictate, and, as I said before, not deviate from what is good, if possible, but be able to do evil if constrained.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Turn over the rudder in God's name, and sail with the wind heaven sends us.
Catherine of Siena
A benefit of friendship is knowing whom to tell secrets to.
Alessandro Manzoni
The man who seeks to educate himself must first read and then travel in order to correct what he has learned.
Giacomo Casanova
Throughout our lives, after all, we look for a story of our origins, to tell us why we were born and why we have lived.
Umberto Eco
Realize that everything connects to everything else.
Leonardo da Vinci
To the very last, the desire to challenge oneself and understand more. And to the very last: doubt.
Carlo Rovelli
I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language.
Italo Calvino
To get girls he had figured out that all you had to do was talk little, the bare minimum, and listen much, without ever passing judgment. [Mister Gregory]
Sveva Casati Modignani
Now if only we stopped for a moment to think, it is quite obvious that there is no merit or design or logic in the way luck and talent are distributed in this world. For every man kissed by the sun there are millions in the shade, and there is no valid reason to rule out-or maintain-the possibility that the one is better than the other.
Filippo Bologna
Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Time is information we don't have. Time is our ignorance.
Carlo Rovelli
In our time, the curse is monetary illiteracy, just as inability to read plain print was the curse of earlier centuries.
Ezra Pound
Die Menschen tun das Böse nie so vollständig und begeistert, wie wenn sie es aus religiöser Überzeugung tun.
Umberto Eco
He could no longer pretend not to have been brought to his knees by her blows, and he could no longer avoid the sentiments that his heart forced him to feel.
Mirella Muffarotto
He who has the courage to laugh is almost as much the master of the world as he who is ready to die.
Giacomo Leopardi
The Christian should be characterized by an effort to see things in the best light; if it is true that the word Evangelos means good news, then Christian means happy man, spreader of happiness. 'Grim faces,' Saint Philip Neri used to say, 'are not made for the merry house of Paradise!
Pope John Paul I
You stay in the war because it would be shameful to stay out of it. An then grief seizes you and hold its grip till anger has turned you into a soldier.
Erri De Luca
Women particularly should concern themselves with peace because men by nature are more foolhardy and headstrong, and their overwhelming desire to avenge themselves prevents them from foreseeing the resulting dangers and terrors of war. But woman by nature is more gentle and circumspect. Therefore, if she has sufficient will and wisdom she can provide the best possible means to pacify man.
Christine de Pizan
The devil is not the prince of matter; the devil is the arrogance of spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt. The devil is grim because he knows where he is going, and, in moving, he always returns from whence he came.
Umberto Eco
A man had better study what a human being is, because he's marrying one - assuming that merely being one has not been sufficient stimulus to that study.
Pope Pius XI
One can make war to everything - but not to Peace.Puoi far la guerra a tutto - ma non alla Pace.
Adriano Bulla
The soul is in God and God in the soul, just as the fish is in the sea and the sea in the fish.
Catherine of Siena
It is always easy to break one’s word to oneself.
Giacomo Casanova
Well, Diotallevi and I are planning a reform in higher education. A School of Comparative Irrelevance, where useless or impossibe courses are given. The school's aim is to turn out scholars capable of endlessly increasing the number of unnecessary subjects.
Umberto Eco
[I]f you seek in every way to minimise my firm beliefs by your anti-feminist attacks, please recall that a small dagger or knife point can pierce a great, bulging sack and that a small fly can attack a great lion and speedily put him to flight.
Christine de Pizan
No, you listen! All my life, you've told me that the world is a dark, cruel place. But now I see that the only thing dark and cruel about it is people like you!
Salvatore Quasimodo
One of the most powerful opponents of happiness is indeed fear. Unfortunately, the chains that bind people to their comfortable mediocrity are the same ones that bind their future to an unsuccessful destiny. The courage to dream is the very first step. LISTENING TO YOUR DREAMS is the second!
Rossana Condoleo
But is the unicorn a falsehood? It's the sweetest of animals and a noble symbol. It stands for Christ and for chastity; it can be captured only by setting a virgin in the forest, so that the animal, catching her most chaste odor, will go and lay its head in her lap, offering itself as prey to the hunters' snares.""So it is said, Adso. But many tend to believe that it's a fable, an invention of the pagans.""What a disappointment," I said. "I would have liked to encounter one, crossing a wood. Otherwise what's the pleasure of crossing a wood?
Umberto Eco
Some time ago, my son Emilio was going back to school after vacation. He did not like the idea at all and was filled with anxiety. To him, the approach of school days was like a monster that threatened him and wanted to squash him. What is a parent supposed to do? I tried to lift his spirits, to distract him, convince him it was not as bad as it seemed, but in vain. Then I hit upon the idea of offering him something that is almost taboo in our family: French fries at a fast-food place. Usually anything that is prohibited appeals to Emilio, especially junk food. I thought I had the ace up my sleeve. But no. Emilio's reply ought to be chiseled in stone: "Dad, you don't solve problems with french fries."Touche. You don't pretend problems do not exist, and you can't solve them with ephemeral distractions. You have to face them with open-eyed honesty. Offering French fries to my son in order to console and distract him from his anxiety was by no means a kind act. I was simply choosing the easier option--far too easy. I had found a comfortable way out.
Piero Ferrucci
The wisest are the most annoyed at the loss of time.
Dante Alighieri
... From want of foresight men make changes which relishing well at first do not betray their hidden venom, as I have already observed respecting hectic fever. Nevertheless, the ruler is not truly wise who cannot discern evils before they develop themselves, and this is a faculty given to few.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Destiny is the invention of the cowardly, and the resigned.
Ignazio Silone
Every time I start a picture ... I feel the same fear the same self-doubts ... and I have only one source on which I can draw because it comes from within me.
Federico Fellini
Mentre che la speranza ha fior del verde
Dante Alighieri
Perhaps she just needed to remind herself more often how that gold was still floating above her head, it's minuscule particles visible only when pierced by a certain light.
Francesca Marciano
Don't ask me to give in to this body of mine. I can't afford it. Between me and my body there must be a struggle until death.
Saint Margaret of Cortona
Your first book is the only one that matters. Perhaps a writer should write only that one. That is the one moment when you make the big leap; the opportunity to express yourself is offered that once, and you untie the knot within you then or never again.
Italo Calvino
We must therefore take account of this changeable nature of things and of human institutions and prepare for them with enlightened foresight.
Pope Pius XI
If you meet an angel, you will have not peace, but a fever.
Stefano Benni
This thought strengthened in me my belief that all men, without exception, deserve to be pitied, if only because they are alive.
Alberto Moravia
Content Is King, Distribution is Queen
Andrea Febbraio
If she had looked into his eyes at that very moment she would have seen the inferno that she had thrown him into.
Mirella Muffarotto
It may be possible to forget our past but our past is not going to forget us.
Francesca Marciano
non c’è peggiore infedeltà che essere fedeli a un morto
Don Lorenzo Milani