Quotes by Italian Authors - Page 21

By nature man without woman can feel no joy. She is his mother, his sister, his loving friend. She is seldom his enemy.
Christine de Pizan
O happy wound, full of delight, He whom You wound Is joyous indeed.
Jacopone da Todi
The only joy in the world is to begin.
Cesare Pavese
..if you put people on a diet, they start thinking about food. Or if you make someone stop smoking, all they think about is cigarettes. It seems logical enough to me that if you tell a person he can't have sex, he's going to be obsessive about the subject. Then to give him the power to tell other people how to run their sex lives, well, that's just asking for trouble. In a way, it's like having a blind person teach Art History, isn't it?
Donna Leon
Porn is in the eye of the beholder.
Adriano Bulla
Her breast was young, the nipples rosy. Cosimo just grazed it with his lips, before Viola slid away over the branches as if she were flying, with him clambering after her, and that skirt of hers always in his face
Italo Calvino
Why did it have to be such a shameful secret? Hadn’t I been potty-trained and taught to chew with my mouth closed? So what was the freaking big deal about having sex? Wasn’t it essential to the survival of our darn, hypocritical species?
Gaia B. Amman
The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the genitals and the tongue.
Leonardo da Vinci
Someone who begins to develop an interest in the teachings can tend to distance themselves from the reality of material things, as if the teachings were something completely apart from daily life. Often, at the bottom of all this, there is an attitude of giving up and running away from one's own problems, with the illusion that one will be able to find something that will miraculously help one to transcend all that. But the teachings are based on the principle of our actual human condition. We have a physical body with all its various limits: each day we have to eat, work, rest, and so on. This is our reality, and we can't ignore it.
Namkhai Norbu
Fair and unfair are for children
Michelle Lovric
Men in general are as much affected by what a thing appears to be as by what it is, indeed they are frequently influenced more by appearances than by reality.
Niccolò Machiavelli
If one starts to draw comparisons between what is and what is not, it is the poorer qualities of the former that strike you, the impurities, the flaws; in short, you can only really feel safe with nothingness.
Italo Calvino
Reality is always richer, more unpredictable than our deductions
Leonardo Sciascia
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
Only our imagination has the power to create the world you want and whatever gives you true joy. Beware of those who tell you to face reality and let go of your imagination. All they may truly ask for is that you shift your imagination from what you want to what they want.
Franco Santoro
The city of Leonia refashions itself every day: every morning the people wake between fresh sheets, wash with just-unwrapped cakes of soap, wear brand-new clothing, take from the latest model refrigerator still unopened tins, listening to the last-minute jingles from the most up-to-date radio.On the sidewalks, encased in spotless plastic bags, the remains of yesterday's Leonia await the garbage truck. Not only squeezed tubes of toothpaste, blown-out light bulbs, newspapers, containers, wrappings, but also boilers, encyclopedias, pianos, porcelain dinner services.It is not so much by the things that each day are manufactured, sold, bought, that you can measure Leonia's opulence, but rather by the things that each day are thrown out to make room for the new.So you begin to wonder if Leonia's true passion is really , as they say, the enjoyment of new things, and not, instead, the joy of expelling, discarding, cleansing itself of a recurrent impurity. The fact is that street cleaners are welcomed like angels.
Italo Calvino
Whatever is a reality today, whatever you touch and believe in and that seems real for you today, is going to be, like the reality of yesterday, an illusion tomorrow.
Luigi Pirandello
Beside her I felt grey, like she had all the colours I'd ever need.
Daniela Sacerdoti
…I am left with lessthan one drop of my blood that does not tremble.I recognize the the signs of the old flame.
Dante Alighieri
Within her presence, I had once been usedto feeling—trembling—wonder, dissolution;but that was long ago. Still, though my soul,now she was veiled, could not see her directly,by way of hidden force that she could move,I felt the mighty power of old love.
Dante Alighieri
The fury of confession, at first,then the fury of clarity:It was from you, Death, that such hypocriticalobscure feeling was born! And nowlet them accuse me of every passion,let them bad-mouth me, let them say I’m deformed,impure, obsessed, a dilettante, a perjurer.You isolate me, you give me the certainty of life,I’m on the stake. I play the card of fireand I win this little, immense goodness of mine.I can do it, for I have suffered you too much!I return to you as an émigré returnsto his own country and rediscovers it:I made a fortune (in the intellect)and I’m happy, as I once was,destitute of any norm,a black rage of poetry in my breast.A crazy old-age youth.Once your joy was confused with terror,it’s true, and now almost with other joy,livid and arid, my passion deluded.Now you really frighten me,for you are truly close to me,part of my angry state, of obscure hunger,of the anxiety almost of a new being.
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Love thou thy dreamAll base love scorning,Love thou the windAnd here take warningThat dreams alone can truly be,For 'tis in dream I come to thee.Ezra Pound, The Songtrad. Ungaretti:Ama il tuo sogno Ama il tuo sognoOgni inferiore amore disprezzando,Il vento amaEd accorgiti quiChe i sogni solo possono veramente essere,Perciò in sogno a raggiungerti m’avvio.
Ezra Pound
But there is an overarching passion that keeps me alive. That is love, understood as a condition in which I can be an inspiration, make someone feel happy and special, and in turn, feel understood and driven. I function better if I am in that condition of love, and I try to cultivate that daily.
Giovanni Frazzetto
These are my habits and the way I spend my life: studying literature.
Christine de Pizan
Passion - eventually it cools.
Francesca Marciano
You only have to start saying of something : 'Ah, how beautiful ! We must photograph it !' and you are already close to the view of the person who thinks that everything that is not photographed is lost, as if it never existed, and therefore in order to really live you must photograph as much as you can, and to photograph as much as you can you must either live in the most photographable way possible, or else consider photographable every moment of your life.
Italo Calvino
I freeze and burn, love is bitter and sweet, my sighs are tempests and my tears are floods, I am in ecstasy and agony, I am possessed by memories of her and I am in exile from myself.
Francesco Petrarca
I felt for the tormented whirlwindsDamned for their carnal sinsCommitted when they let their passions rule their reason.
Dante Alighieri
Be the flame, not the moth.
Giacomo Casanova
Turn over the rudder in God's name, and sail with the wind heaven sends us.
Catherine of Siena
Can you call yourself a coward simply because the courage of others seems to you out of proportion to the triviality of the occasion? Thus wisdom creates cowards. And thus you miss Opportunity while spending your life on the lookout for it.
Umberto Eco
She, on the other hand, seized things, truly wanted them, was passionate about them, played for all or nothing, and wasn’t afraid of contempt, mockery, spitting, beatings.
Elena Ferrante
You do not carry the cross. Instead you are all crucified on the timber of your sufficiency, which is given to you, the more you insist, the more you bleed: it suits you to say you carry the cross like a sacred duty, whereas you are heavy with the weight of your necessities. Have the courage not to admit those necessities and lift yourselves up for your own sakes.
Carlo Michelstaedter
Often the test of courage becomes rather to live than to die.
Vittorio Alfieri
I lacked the courage to investigate the weaknesses of the wicked, because I discovered they are the same as the weaknesses of the saintly.
Umberto Eco
When the Universe is taken into account, nothing is impossible.
Massimo Marino
You don't know what it means to live the life that you could have lived, if an event over which you have no control, an unforeseeable circumstance, had not distracted and diverted you, and at times crushed you, as has happened to me.
Luigi Pirandello
...and here, in this if I always lose myself.
Luigi Pirandello
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
He who does not know how to believe, should not know.
Antonio Porchia
In Italy there are about 60 million people and we know howhigh is the percentage of morons on national soil. However, inChina there are about 1.4 billion people and in India almost 1.3billion. Therefore I wonder then, if more or less all the world isa small village, with how many morons should we have to cometo terms on the territory of this stupid planet. It's the same theworld over, or the world is the same wherever you go!
Carl William Brown
if I can't change the world," he told her, "I will change the way people look at it.
Gian Andrea
Willingly or not we come to terms with power, forgetting that we are all in the ghetto, that the ghetto is walled in, that outside the ghetto reign the lords of death, and that close by the train is waiting." by Primo Levi in Drowned
Primo Levi
It is man who kills, man who creates or suffers injustice; it is no longer man who, having lost all restraint, shares his bed with a corpse. Whoever waits for his neighbor to die in order to take his piece of bread is, albeit guiltless, further from the model ofthinking man than the most primitive pigmy or the most vicious sadist".
Primo Levi
They are the typical product of the structure of the German Lager: if one offers a position of privilege to a few individuals in a state of slavery, exacting in exchange the betrayal of a natural solidarity with theircomrades, there will certainly be someone who will accept. He will be withdrawn from the common law and will become untouchable; the more power that he is given, the more he will be consequently hateful andhated. When he is given the command of a group of unfortunates, with the right of life or death over them, he will be cruel and tyrannical, because he will understand that if he is not sufficiently so, someone else, judged more suitable, will take over his post.Moreover, his capacity for hatred, unfulfilled in the direction of the oppressors, will double back, beyond all reason, on the oppressed; and he will only be satisfied when he has unloaded onto his underlings the injury received from above.
Primo Levi
I am a scholar of stupidity, so thanks for existing.
Carl William Brown
Publicity is the soul of stupidity, but we must not forget that we live in a stupid universe, so publicity is the engine of our world.
Carl William Brown
Scratch the heresy and you will find the leper. Every battle against heresy wants only this: to keep the leper as he is.
Umberto Eco
The obstinacy on which power is based is never so fragile as in the moment of its triumph.
Italo Calvino
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
But why do some people support [the heretics]?" "Because it serves their purposes, which concern the faith rarely, and more often the conquest of power." "Is that why the church of Rome accuses all its adversaries of heresy?" "That is why, and that is also why it recognizes as orthodoxy any heresy it can bring back under its own control or must accept because the heresy has become too strong.
Umberto Eco
Wisdom consists of knowing how to distinguish the nature of trouble, and in choosing the lesser evil.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Mind being the seat of the soul, and literature being the expression of the mind, literature, it follows, is the soul of an age, the surviving and immortal part of it.
Rafael Sabatini
Petty minds foster petty hearts, and have the funny habit of shooting themselves in the foot.
Adriano Bulla
As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself.
Leonardo da Vinci
You must read, you must persevere, you must sit up nights, you must inquire, and exert the utmost power of your mind. If one way does not lead to the desired meaning, take another; if obstacles arise, then still another; until, if your strength holds out, you will find that clear which at first looked dark.
Giovanni Boccaccio
People are like chains, the closer they are, the stronger they become.
Federico Chini
You must know that it is by the state of the lavatory that a family is judged.
Pope John XXIII
God awaits us with open arms; we need only to take a step toward him like the Prodigal Son. But if, weak as we are, we don't have the strength to take that step, just the desire to take it is enough.
Andrea Tornielli
But if it so happens ... a work ... under pain of otherwise becoming shameful or false, requires fantasy ... [and that] certain limbs or elements of a figure are altered by borrowing from other species, for example transforming into a dolphin the hinder end of a griffon or a stag ... these alterations will be excellent and the substitution, however unreal it may seem, deserves to be declared a fine invention in the genre of the monstrous.When a painter introduces into this kind of work of art chimerae and other imaginary beings in order to divert and entertain the senses and also to captivate the eyes of mortals who long to see unclassified and impossible things, he shows himself more respectful of reason than if he produced the usual figures of men or of animals.
Michelangelo Buonarroti