Quotes by Italian Authors - Page 14

I'm lying, yes, but why do you force me to give a linear explanation; linear explanations are almost always lies.
Elena Ferrante
I am very poor - for a know nothing, understand nothing. It is not a calamitous condition until it is realized.
Rafael Sabatini
I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments and demonstrations.
Galileo Galilei
Whatever Nature has in store for mankind, unpleasant as it may be, men must accept, for ignorance is never better than knowledge.
Enrico Fermi
If you know one thing very well and the rest only superficially, that one thing will always appear to be more 'unique.
Piero Scaruffi
But karma is not in fact a material accumulation, and does not depend on externals; rather its power to condition us depends on the obstacles that impede our knowledge. If we compare our karma and the ignorance that creates it to a dark room, knowledge of the primordial state would be like a lamp, which, when lit in the room, at once causes the darkness to disappear, enlightening everything. In the same way, if one has the presence of the primordial state, one can overcome all hindrances in an instant.
Namkhai Norbu
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
He who makes a paradise of his bread makes a hell of his hunger.
Antonio Porchia
Beware the man of a single book.
Thomas Aquinas
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
They [his readers, whom he asks to be his friends] will find that I have always loved truth so passionately that I have often resorted to lying as a way of first introducing it into minds which were ignorant of its charms” (Casanova, p.34, Vol 1 Preface).
Giacomo Casanova
I’m a liar, but an honest one. People reproach me for not always telling the same story in the same way. But this happens because I’ve invented the whole tale from the start and it seems boring to me and unkind to other people to repeat myself.
Federico Fellini
He is, or has been, in many ways a great man. But for this very reason he is odd. It is only petty men who seem normal.
Umberto Eco
It doesn't matter, the important thing is to fall asleep caressing the charm of an image. Because the last thing you think of before falling asleep must always be the most beautiful.
Filippo Bologna
The experience of this sweet life.
Dante Alighieri
The reading of good books could soothe human stupidity, the problem is that human stupidity does not like to read.
Carl William Brown
Life and art are nothing but associations of ideas and sorrows that nourish our illusory quest for the Holy Grail of human existence. It’s a mystery!
Carl William Brown
I could hardly sleep and even when I did drop off, I awoke to a grim thought: I’m disgusting. I can’t play any more. I went to bed with Dudek and all his Liverpool team-mates.
Andrea Pirlo
So many memories come rushing over me as I stand here. They run through my mind like a movie…an old Italian movie. Some scenes are in black and white. Some are in vivid color. Some are silent…just images etched into my memory. Many are filled with laughter or tears. They all bring back the happiness of Terra d’Amore and a life in the paradise of my youth. The sights and the sounds and the smells are all returning to me now, filling up my senses, overwhelming my heart.
Giacomino Nicolazzo
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
It must be said that charity can, in no way, exist along with mortal sin.
Thomas Aquinas
Perception of personal danger very often set people on the path of virtue.
Donna Leon
It’s not God who gave us moral laws, but this doesn’t make them less important
Margherita Hack
Us atheist people, we believe we have to act properly and honestly for a moral principle and not because we expect an award in Paradise.
Margherita Hack
The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.
Dante Alighieri
I hid my wound under my clothes. Nobody could see it, including myself, and I completely forgot about it. Then I met someone who, filled with love, held me tight in that point. The pain was devastating, and I hated him, o how much I hated him, the cause of all my suffering. Then I met someone, beautifully dressed, and I loved him so much, holding him tight with all my passion. And he suffered badly, and he hated me, o how much he hated me, the cause of all his pain. So the story went on till I met someone who undressed himself, standing completely naked, with all his horrible wounds. Hence I also undressed, and I saw my horrible wounds, which he could also see. Then...
Franco Santoro
We need an enemy to give people hope. Someone said that patriotism is the last refuge of cowards: those without moral principles usually wrap a flag around themselves, and the bastards always talk about the purity of the race. 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. Hatred has to be cultivated as a civic passion. The enemy is the friend of the people. You always want someone to hate in order to feel justified in your own misery. Hatred is the primordial passion. It is love that’s abnormal.
Umberto Eco
It's ironic how those with the most loving arms are the ones who get the most hate.
Sara Deuidicibus
He who thinks little errs much…
Leonardo da Vinci
Universe doesn't even know that you exist, so relax!
Carl William Brown
Modern civilisation has based its specific foundation on the principle of liberty which states that man is not a mere instrument to be used by others but rather a main autonomous living being.
Altiero Spinelli
What is a saint supposed to do, if not convert wolves?
Umberto Eco
We have given to thee, Adam, no fixed seat, no form of thy own, no gift peculiarly thine, that thou mayest feel as thine own, have as thine own, possess as thine own, the seat, the form, the gifts which thou thyself shalt desire. A limited nature in other creatures is confined within the laws written down by Us. In conformity with thy free judgment, in whose hands I have placed thee, thou art confined by no bounds; and thou will fix the limits of nature for thyself. I have placed thee at the centre of the world, that from there thou mayest more conveniently look around and see whatsoever is in the world. Neither heavenly nor earthly, neither mortal nor immortal have We made thee. Thou, like a judge appointed for being honourable, art the molder and maker of thyself.
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
The tear is the language of the soul and the voice of the feeling.
Filippo Pananti
God is never angry for His sake, only for ours.
Thomas Aquinas
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
What was that about?” he asked his voice deep with a bitter distain. I raised an eyebrow at him, “What was what about?”“All that, ‘Are-you-okay?’ and ‘Do-you-want-to-talk-about-it?’ crap.”“I was being nice. You know, that thing you being the total opposite of right now.
Sara Massa
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
I simply decided once and for all to liberate myself from the anxiety of notoriety and the urge to be a part of that circle of successful people, those who believe they have won who-knows-what
Elena Ferrante
Amusement has always been the great moving force behind culture.
Italo Calvino
The Republic of Venice used to boast that, in the space of three months, it could know all the events of the Mediterranean. We see the astronauts, from the distance of a few feet, at the very moment they land on the moon. Unfortunately the news almost swamps us with its frequency and abundance. It doesn't give us time to reflect: we are so constantly amazed that gradually we lose our capacity for being surprised at anything, and we don't enjoy even beautiful things.
Pope John Paul I
Then, all of a sudden, those pea-green lawns where the first scarlet poppies were flowering, those canary-yellow fields which striped the tawny hills sloping down to a sea full of azure glints, all seemed so trivial to me, so banal, so false, so much in contrast with Ayl's person, with Ayl's world, with Ayl's idea of beauty, that I realized her place could never have been out here. And I realized, with grief and fear, that I had remained out here, that I would never again be able to escape those gilded and silvered gleams, those little clouds that turned from pale blue to pink, those green leaves that yellowed every autumn, and that Ayl's perfect world was lost forever, so lost I couldn't even imagine it any more, and nothing was left that could remind me of it, even remotely, nothing except perhaps that cold wall of gray stone.
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
My people? Who are they?I went into the church where the congregationWorshiped my God. Were they my people?I felt no kinship to them as they knelt there.My people! Where are they?I went into the land where I was born,Where men spoke my language.I was a stranger there.“My people,” my soul cried. “Who are my people?”Last night in the rain I met an old manWho spoke a language I do not speak,Which marked him as one who does not know my God.With apologetic smile he offered meThe shelter of his patched umbrella.I met his eyes...And then I knew...
Rosa Zagnoni Marinoni
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
The language of experiment is more authoritative than any reasoning: facts can destroy our ratiocination—not vice versa.
Alessandro Volta
The polyglot is a linguistic nomad.
Rosi Braidotti
Signs form a language, but not the one you think you know.
Italo Calvino
The proper use of language, for me personally, is one that enables us to approach things (present or absent) with discretion, attention, and caution, with respect for what things (present or absent) communicate without words.
Italo Calvino
This story, which takes place one a Sunday in July in a hot, deserted Lisbon, is the Requiem that the character I refer to as “I” was called on to perform in this book. Were someone to ask me why I wrote this story in Portuguese, I would answer simply that a story like this could only be written in Portuguese; it's as simple as that. But there is something else that needs explaining. Strictly speaking, a Requiem should be written in Latin, at least that's what tradition prescribes. Unfortunately, I don't think I'd be up to it in Latin. I realised though that I couldn't write a Requiem in my own language and I that I required a different language, one that was for me A PLACE OF AFFECTION AND REFLECTION.
Antonio Tabucchi
So many people consider their work a daily punishment. Whereas I love my work as a translator. Translation is a journey over a sea from one shore to the other. Sometimes I think of myself as a smuggler: I cross the frontier of language with my booty of words, ideas, images, and metaphors.
Amara Lakhous
If there's any interaction between genes and languages, it is often languages that influence genes, since linguistic differences between populations lessen the chance of genetic exchange between them.
Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza
To me it seems that those sciences are vain and full of error which are not born of experience, mother of all certainty, first-hand experience which in its origins, or means, or end has passed through one of the five senses. And if we doubt the certainty of everything which passes through the senses, how much more ought we to doubt things contrary to these senses – ribelli ad essi sensi – such as the existence of God or of the soul or similar things over which there is always dispute and contention. And in fact it happens that whenever reason is wanting men to cry out against one another, which does not happen with certainties. For this reason we shall say that where the cry of controversy is heard, there is no true science, because the truth has one single end and when this is published, argument is destroyed for ever.
Leonardo da Vinci
So there are countless reasons to remain on this Godforsaken planet that was long considered the only world, if for no other reason than to learn the end of our story: what the author of our lives has not yet taken the trouble to finish.
Filippo Bologna
Come on, shake off the covers of this sloth, for sitting softly cushioned, or tucked in bed, is no way to win fame.
Dante Alighieri
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
Making mathematics accessible to the educated layman, while keeping high scientific standards, has always been considered a treacherous navigation between the Scylla of professional contempt and the Charybdis of public misunderstanding.
Gian-Carlo Rota
At the limit it could be said that every speaking being has a personal language of his own, that is his own particular way of thinking and feeling. Culture, at its various levels, unifies in a series of strata, to the extent that they come into contact with each other, a greater or lesser number of individuals who understand each other's mode of expression to varying degrees, etc.
Antonio Gramsci
If there were a little more silence, if we all kept quiet...maybe we could understand something.
Federico Fellini
Dear girl with the red scarf,Love was never meant to be conquered. You have to surrender to it.Trust me, after all, I am Mr. Universe.
Maria La Serra