Quotes by Italian Authors - Page 12

When the superficial wearies me, it wearies me so much that I need an abyss in order to rest.
Antonio Porchia
The world is divided into the ordinary and the extraordinary. The problem is deciding which is which.
Piero Scaruffi
Life on Earth gives only a small taste of what can happen in the universe.
Carlo Rovelli
...seen from above, landscapes are made up of mountains and watercourses. Just as a transparent model of the human body consists of a framework of bone and a network of arteries, the earth's crust is structured in mountain ridges, river, creeks, and gullies.
Reinhold Messner
Draw, Antonio; draw, Antonio; draw and don’t waste time.
Michelangelo Buonarroti
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
Ezra Pound
Common sense is a chaotic aggregate of disparate conceptions, and one can find there anything that one like.
Antonio Gramsci
The brain is not nourished on beans and truffles but rather the food manages to reconstitute the molecules of the brain once it has been turned into homogeneous and assimilable substances, which potentially have the "same nature", as the molecules of the brain
Antonio Gramsci
Common sense is not a single unique conception, identical in time and space. It is the "folklore" of philosophy, and, like folklore, it takes countless different forms. Its most fundamental character is that it is a conception which, even in the brain of one individual, is fragmentary, incoherent and inconsequential.
Antonio Gramsci
I, too, head for the Baths of Caracalla,thinking—with my old, magnificentprivilege of thinking…(And let there still be a god in me that thinks,lost, weak, and childish,yet whose voice is so humanit is almost a song.) Oh, to leavethis prison of poverty!To be free of the yearningthat makes these ancient nights so splendid!He who knows yearning, and he who does not,have something in common: man’s desires are humble.
Pier Paolo Pasolini
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
Nothing is further from the truth than the claim that the American soul is ‘open-minded’ and unbiased; on the contrary, it is ridden with countless taboos of which people are sometimes not even aware.
Julius Evola
The Americans are the living refutation of the Cartesian axiom, "I think, therefore I am": Americans do not think, yet they are.
Julius Evola
To refuse any bond of union between man and civil society, on the one hand, and God the Creator and consequently the supreme Law-giver, on the other, is plainly repugnant to the nature, not only of man, but of all created things; for, of necessity, all effects must in some proper way be connected with their cause; and it belongs to the perfection of every nature to contain itself within that sphere and grade which the order of nature has assigned to it, namely, that the lower should be subject and obedient to the higher.
Pope Leo XIII
Since Shakespeare had a feel for revolutionary rhetoric, let’s all cry: “Peace, freedom and liberty!
Carl William Brown
This is so whether the said body of citizens or its prevailing part does this directly of itself, or commits the task to another or others who are not and cannot be the legislator in an unqualified sense but only in a certain respect and at a certain time and in accordance with the authority of the primary legislator. And in consequence of this I say that laws and anything else instituted by election must receive their necessary approval from the same primary authority and no other: whatever may be the situation concerning various ceremonies or solemnities, which are not required for the results of an election to stand but for their good standing, and even without which the election would be no less valid. I say further that it is by the same authority that laws and anything else instituted by election must receive any addition or subtraction or even total overhaul, any interpretation and any suspension: depending on the demands of time and place and other circumstances that might make one of these measures opportune for the sake of the common advantage in such matters.
Marsiglio of Padua
We'll make an army in the trees and bring the earth and the people on it to their senses.
Italo Calvino
I feel no nostalgia for our childhood: it was full of violence. Every sort of thing happened, at home and outside, every day, but I don't recall having ever thought that the life we had there was particularly bad. Life was like that, that's all, we grew up with the duty to make it difficult for others before they made it difficult for us.
Elena Ferrante
Up or down, it seemed to us that we were always going toward something terrible that had existed before us yet had always been waiting for us, just for us. When you haven't been in the world long, it's hard to comprehend what disasters are at the origin of a sense of disaster: maybe you don't even feel the need to. Adults, waiting for tomorrow, move in a present behind which is yesterday or the day before yesterday or at most last week: they don't want to think about the rest. Children don't know the meaning of yesterday, or the day before yesterday, or even of tomorrow, everything is this: the street is this, the doorway is this, the stairs are this, this is Mamma, this is Papa, this is the day, this is the night.
Elena Ferrante
No matter what happens, always Keep your childhood innocence. It's the most important thing.
Federico Fellini
When we do not succeed to be ourselves, we finally realize that is was completely useless to exist...
Hugo Pratt
Why are we so afraid to die? Are we concerned about the reckoning we may have to face on the other side? Or does the thought of our nonexistence terrify us? Perhaps neither. Perhaps what we fear most is no longer being able to do the things we love.
Fabrizio Paterlini
Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.
Primo Levi
Come on, it is a guest bedroom! If you want your guests to feel at home, they should be allowed to do whatever they do at home!
Daniele Lanzarotta
What he didn’t know was how to beg for her forgiveness, and at that moment, her forgiveness was what he craved the most…even more than he craved her blood.
Daniele Lanzarotta
Nothing which implies contradiction falls under the omnipotence of God.
Thomas Aquinas
We survive, in the confusionof a life reborn beyond reason.
Pier Paolo Pasolini
A man has free choice to the extent that he is rational.
Thomas Aquinas
A man has free choice to the extent that he is rational
Thomas Aquinas
Reason itself is fallible, and this fallibility must find a place in our logic.
Nicola Abbagnano
If they lacked the opportunity, the strength of their sprit would have been sapped; if they had lacked ability, the opportunity would have been wasted.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Words have power, and sometimes, they stay withyou for life. It’s up to you to allow those words to define who you become.
Daniele Lanzarotta
If you get sick again? Alec, stop hiding behind that. We start dying the day we are born. If everyone thought the way you do, no one would ever go after their dreams. There would be a ton of unhappy people moping around.
Daniele Lanzarotta
I’m starting to think that you have a really bad habit of trying to save me.”She turns shy and looks down. “You are worth saving.
Daniele Lanzarotta
Although she was fragile in appearance, every prohibition lost substance in her presence.
Elena Ferrante
Sometimes to take two steps in a row, one after the other, I need to make a contract with myself.
Erri De Luca
Long novels written today are perhaps a contradiction: the dimension of time has been shattered, we cannot love or think except in fragments of time each of which goes off along its own trajectory and immediately disappears.
Italo Calvino
Why do I write? Out of fear. Out of fear that the memory of the people I write about might go lost. Out of fear that the memory of myself might get lost. Or even just to be shielded by a story, to slip inside a story and stop being recognizable, controllable, subject to blackmail.
Fabrizio de André
We often hear that mathematics consists mainly of 'proving theorems.' Is a writer's job mainly that of 'writing sentences?
Gian-Carlo Rota
When you stop pretending to be who you are not and start being yourself, there is a big risk: significant people in your life may not accept you and leave. Yet, when you stop being yourself and pretend to be who you are not, there is a much bigger risk: the people who would accept and love you just as you are, may not accept you and leave.
Franco Santoro
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
The seventh reader interrupts you: "Do you believe that every story must have a beginning and an end? In ancient times a story could only end in two ways: having passed all the tests, the hero and heroine married, or else they died. The ultimate meaning to which all stories refer has two faces: the continuity of life, the inevitability of death."You stop for a moment to reflect on these words. Then, in a flash, you decide you want to marry Ludmilla.
Italo Calvino
The rules say that to tell a story you need first of all a measuring stick, a calendar, you have to calculate how much time has passed between you and the facts, the emotions to be narrated.
Elena Ferrante
The mind which is created quick to love, is responsive to everything that is pleasing, soon as by pleasure it is awakened into activity. Your apprehensive faculty draws an impression from a real object, and unfolds it within you, so that it makes the mind turn thereto. And if, being turned, it inclines towards it, that inclination is love; that is nature, which through pleasure is bound anew within you.
Dante Alighieri
A prince need take little account of conspiracies if the people are disposed in his favor.
Niccolò Machiavelli
One might be led to question whether the scientists acted wisely in presenting the statesmen of the world with this appalling problem. Actually there was no choice. Once basic knowledge is acquired, any attempt at preventing its fruition would be as futile as hoping to stop the earth from revolving around the sun.
Enrico Fermi
As a woman I am so curious about prostitutes because of the idea that they know men better than you. Also, it's such a strange way to live. But at the same time there are prostitutes who just want to be prostitutes, and this is this woman, nobody pushed her to do it. She's a prostitute because she wants to be a prostitute. It's her philosophy of life.
Monica Bellucci
They call it "young music"; I see, however, that the record industry makes millions by the carload for shrewd older people! They invoke the name of spontaneity, nonconformity and originality; actually, canny "clothing industrialists" manipulate the field, undisturbed sovereigns! They call themselves revolutionaries, but the overscrupulous attentions devoted to their hair and their dress risk creating merely effeminates.
Pope John Paul I
That infinite and indescribable good which is there above races as swiftly to love as a ray of light to a bright body.It gives of itself according to the ardor it finds, so that as charity spreads farther the eternal good increases upon it,and the more souls there are who love, up there, the more there are to love well, and the more love they reflect to each other, as in a mirror.
Dante Alighieri
Through the waters spilled by the spring, I was remade. Forth I fared, a new plant with new leaves in a new time. The stars were there, and I was set to climb.
Dante Aligherie
All the way to heaven is heaven, because Jesus said, "I am the way.
Catherine of Siena
I don't like Paradise,As they probably don't have obsessions there.
Alda Merini
Heaven wheels above you, displaying to you her eternal glories, and still your eyes are on the ground
Dante Alighieri
The path to paradise begins in hell.
Dante Alighieri
the cemetery is the home of those who are not here, come in.
Italo Calvino
I had a theory; I’m not sure if it was my own but it worked for me. Public spaces, such as streets and subway stations, became inhabitable as I assigned them some value and imprinted an experience on them. If I recited a snatch of Paterson every time I walked along a certain avenue, eventually that avenue would sound like William Carlos Williams. The entrance to the subway at 116th Street was Emily Dickinson’s:Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawnIndicative that suns go down;The notice to the startled grassThat darkness is about to pass.
Valeria Luiselli
No ideology is worth a Human life.
Adriano Bulla
Don’t worry. You’re lost. The best of us are, but you will find your way. The universe is everything, all that is tangible and all that is not. Sometimes it’s easy to get lost in the scheme of things. The world is wondrous and mysterious, but he will reveal himself to you when he is ready.” He paused. “We are all connected, but we don’t realize how. You, me… We’re all connected… somehow. Sooner or later it will all be revealed to us.
Maria La Serra
Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious.
Thomas Aquinas
There's a way, a way way too long but reachable, not for everyone a way but possible... Go and don't lose your way!
Rossana Condoleo