Quotes by Italian Authors - Page 5

Amedeo loved thick tomes, and in tackling them he felt the physical pleasure of undertaking a great task. Weighing them in his hand, thick, closely printed, squat, he would consider with some apprehension the number of pages, the length of the chapters, then venture into them, a bit reluctant at the beginning, without any desire to perform the initial chore of remembering the names, catching the drift of the story; then he would entrust himself to it, running along the lines, crossing the grid of the uniform page, and beyond the leaden print the flame and fire of battle appeared, the cannonball that, whistling through the sky, fell at the feet of Prince Andrei, and the shop filled with engravings and statues where Frederic Moreau, his heart in his mouth, was to meet the Arnoux family. Beyond the surface of the page you entered a world where life was more alive than here on this side…
Italo Calvino
The old woman took her hand, kissed it, and went back home in tears. The sky, pale in the east, still burned over Monte, as if the whole day's splendor was concentrated up there. ... She only saw that great light, that boundless, deep, infinite, mirage.
Grazia Deledda
Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used "to tell" at all.
Umberto Eco
They will say that I, having no literary skill, cannot properly express that which I desire to treat of, but they do not know that my subjects are to be dealt with by experience rather than by words. And [experience] has been the mistress of those who wrote well. And so, as mistress, I will cite her in all cases. Though I may not, like them, be able to quote other authors, I shall rely on that which is much greater and more worthy: on experience, the mistress of their masters.
Leonardo da Vinci
A monk should surely love his books with humility, wishing their good and not the glory of his own curiosity; but what the temptation of adultery is for laymen and the yearning for riches is for secular ecclesiastics, the seduction of knowledge is for monks.
Umberto Eco
He who sees a need and waits to be asked for help is as unkind as if he had refused it.
Dante Alighieri
After all, the fundamental question of philosophy (like that of psychoanalysis) is the same as the question of the detective novel: who is guilty?
Umberto Eco
Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.
Umberto Eco
The book is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer,the wheel. Once invented it cannot be improved. You cannot make a spoonthat is better than a spoon
Umberto Eco
Possibility means "freedom". The measure of freedom enters into the concept of man. That the objective possibilities exist for people not to die of hunder and that people do die of hunger, has its importance, or so one would have thought. But the existence of the objective conditions, of possibilities or of freedom is not yet enough: it is necessary to "know" them, and know how to use them.
Antonio Gramsci
Writing always means hiding something in such a way that it then is discovered; because the truth that can come from my pen is like a shard that has been chipped from a great boulder by a violent impact, then flung far away; because there is no certitude outside falsification.
Italo Calvino
And the good writer chooses his words for their 'meaning', but that meaning is not a a set, cut-off thing like the move of knight or pawn on a chess-board. It comes up with roots, with associations, with how and where the word is familiarly used, or where it has been used brilliantly or memorably.
Ezra Pound
I tried to hate you, to forgive you, all just to forget you, but I'm only capable of loving you. You're tattooed onto my skin, and the more I try to erase you, the deeper you sink in.
Mirella Muffarotto
Ambassadors are the eye and ear of states.
Francesco Guicciardini
Take my heart and squeeze it out over the face of Your Bride, the Church.
Catherine of Siena
Perhaps Lila was right: my book—even though it was having so much success—really was bad, and this was because it was well organized, because it was written with obsessive care, because I hadn’t been able to imitate the disjointed, unaesthetic, illogical, shapeless banality of things.
Elena Ferrante
How pitiful is an intelligence used only to make excuses to quieten the conscience.
Ignazio Silone
The difference between the true and the false is only a prejudice of ours.
Italo Calvino
There is no greater sorrow than to recall a happy time in the midst of wretchedness.
Dante Alighieri
Speak against unconscious oppression,Speak against the tyranny of the unimaginative,Speak against bonds.
Ezra Pound
It's a strange grief… to die of nostalgia for something you you will never live.
Alessandro Baricco
Every luxury must be paid for, and everything is a luxury, starting with being in this world.
Cesare Pavese
The crisis creates situations which are dangerous in the short run, since the various strata of the population are not all capable of orienting themselves equally swiftly, or of reorganizing with the same rhythm. The traditional ruling class, which has numerous trained cadres, changes men and programmes and, with greater speed than is achieved by the subordinate classes, reabsorbs the control that was slipping from its grasp. Perhaps it may make sacrifices, and expose itself to an uncertain future by demagogic promises; but it retains power, reinforces it for the time being, and uses it to crush its adversary and disperse his leading cadres, who cannot be be very numerous or highly trained.
Antonio Gramsci
... I believe that he will prosper most whose mode of acting best adapts itself to the character of the times; and conversely that he will be unprosperous, with whose mode of acting the times do not accord.
Niccolò Machiavelli
To cause pain was a disease. As a child I imagined tiny, almost invisible animals that arrived in the neighborhood at night, they came from the ponds, from the abandoned train cars beyond the embankment, from the stinking grasses called fetienti, from the frogs, the salamanders, the flies, the rocks, the dust, and entered the water and the food and the air, making our mothers, our grandmothers as angry as starving dogs.
Elena Ferrante
Consider that fact that, being nothing in ourselves, we cannot, without divine assistance, accomplish the smallest good or advance the smallest step toward Heaven.
Lorenzo Scupoli
Oh, let us lose our milk teeth and cut instead the strong teeth of hate and love.
Catherine of Siena
It was Chase who had obtained the information from the girl’s boyfriend during a party in an Irish pub, simply by using his British friendliness and charm.
Stefania Mattana
She was afraid of giving in to that overwhelming, absolute, unconditional love, a love that had shown her the route to heaven, but which had also taught her how much one could suffer, to the point where even the sound of your own tears became deafening.
Mirella Muffarotto
The longer the trial to which God subjects you, the greater the goodness in comforting you during the time of the trial and in the exaltation after the combat.
Padre Pio
The liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time it is the font from which all her power flows. For the aim and object of apostolic works is that all who are made sons of God by faith and baptism should come together to praise God in the midst of His Church, to take part in the sacrifice, and to eat the Lord's supper.
Pope Paul VI
Faith in oneself... is the best and safest course.
Michelangelo
God sells us all things at the price of labor.
Leonardo da Vinci
I am searching for that which every man seeks-peace and rest.
Dante Alighieri
What I remember most about those days is how happy we all were. When I think back on my life growing up on Terra d’Amore, tides of warm memories wash over me like the waves of the Mediterranean. Our little farm, nestled in the hills and valleys of Montecalvo just outside Bologna, was idyllic. Indeed, it was an Italian paradise...a veritable heaven.
Giacomino Nicolazzo
William made an ejaculation in his own language that I didn't understand, nor did the abbot understand it, and perhaps it was best for us both, because the word William uttered had an obscene hissing sound.
Umberto Eco
Marika could feel herself cocking the trigger of a loaded gun and pointing it at herself, because the truth could be too shocking a revelation, something that would shake their lives to the core... but lies were just a dead-end alleyway that offered no way out.
Mirella Muffarotto
There are magic moments, involving great physical fatigue and intense motor excitement, that produce visions of people known in the past ("en me retraçant ces détails, j'en suis à me demander s'ils sont réels, ou bien si je les ai rêvés"). As I learned later from the delightful little book of the Abbé de Bucquoy, there are also visions of books as yet unwritten.
Umberto Eco
They merit more praise who know how to suffer misery than those who temper themselves in contentment.
Pietro Aretino
He fell into a solemn silence, which he only eventually broke to say, “I think I’ve become a terrible person. In fact, I’ve become a reptile. Do you know that reptiles are stupid because almost their entire brain capacity is used to feel fear?
Valeria Luiselli
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. And begin with the scum in your area, put their backs to the wall.
Elena Ferrante
Reading is solitude. One reads alone, even in another's presence.
Italo Calvino
Bad thoughts can be dangerous if left to simmer and weaken the heart slowly and invisibly. Like termites that destroy the beams of a house, secretly, in the dark until it's too late and everything collapses.
Massimo Marino
It is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity.
Niccolò Machiavelli
For certain he hath seen all perfectnessFor certain he hath seen all perfectness. Who among other ladies hath seen mine: They that go with her humbly should combine To thank their God for such peculiar grace. So perfect is the beauty of her face That it begets in no wise any sign Of envy, but draws round her a clear line Of love, and blessed faith, and gentleness. Merely the sight of her inakes all things bow: Not she herself alone is holier Than all: but hers, through her, are raised above. From all her acts such lovely graces flow That truly one may never think of her Without a passion of exceeding love.
Dante Alighieri
It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse.
Ezra Pound
The only joy in the world is to begin.
Cesare Pavese
Faith has to do with things that are not seen and hope with things that are not in hand.
Saint Thomas Aquinas
There are many hostelries in his report, which is the true account of an expedition.
Claudio Magris
I am very poor - for a know nothing, understand nothing. It is not a calamitous condition until it is realized.
Rafael Sabatini
In Italy we have not a Common law legal system, we have a stupid one instead!
Carl William Brown
He who imitates what is evil always goes beyond the example that is set on the contrary he who imitates what is good always falls short.
Francesco Guicciardini
I’ve never been able to stand up for myself while growing up, but I will stand up for you against anyone who ever threatens to hurt you in any way.
Daniele Lanzarotta
Then the soul, freed from vice, purged by studies of true philosophy, versed in spiritual life, and practised in matters of the intellect, devoted to the contemplation of her own substance, as if awakened from deepest sleep, opens those eyes which all possess but few use, and sees in herself a ray of that light which is the true image of the angelic beauty communicated to her, and of which she then communicates a faint shadow to the body.
Baldassarre Castiglione
The role of any person in this world is to be themselves without damaging the rest. We are important as long as the rest "is". - Rossana Condoleo
Rossana Condoleo
Diplomacy is the art of letting someone have your way.
Daniele Varè
The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.
Niccolò Machiavelli
You too must not count overmuch on your reality as you feel it today since like that of yesterday it may prove an illusion for you tomorrow.
Luigi Pirandello
I, answering in the end, began: 'Alas,how many yearning thoughts, what great desire,have lead them through such sorrow to their fate?
Dante Alighieri
If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.
Michelangelo Buonarroti