Quotes by Italian Authors - Page 7

It was during that journey to Via Orazio that I began to be made unhappy by my own alienness. I had grown up with those boys, I considered their behavior normal, their violent language was mine. But for six years now I had also been following daily a path that they were completely ignorant of and in the end I had confronted it brilliantly. With them I couldn’t use any of what I learned every day, I had to suppress myself, in some way diminish myself. What I was in school I was there obliged to put aside or use treacherously, to intimidate them. I asked myself what I was doing in that car. They were my friends, of course, my boyfriend was there, we were going to Lila’s wedding celebration. But that very celebration confirmed that Lila, the only person I still felt was essential even though our lives had diverged, no longer belonged to us and, without her, every intermediary between me and those youths, that car racing through the streets, was gone. Why then wasn’t I with Alfonso, with whom I shared both origin and flight? Why, above all, hadn’t I stopped to say to Nino, Stay, come to the reception, tell me when the magazine with my article’s coming out, let’s talk, let’s dig ourselves a cave that can protect us from Pasquale’s driving, from his vulgarity, from the violent tones of Carmela and Enzo, and also—yes, also—of Antonio?
Elena Ferrante
Love becomes imprudent only when it is impatient to enjoy; but when it is a matter of procuring the return of a happiness to which a baleful combination of circumstances has raised impediments, love sees and foresees all that the most subtle perspicacity can discover.
Giacomo Casanova
The Internet gives us everything and forces us to filter it not by the workings of culture, but with our own brains. This risks creating six billion separate encyclopedias, which would prevent any common understanding whatsoever.
Umberto Eco
The first move was to turn to the one great, perfectly visible and certified revolution in the recent history of the human race [the Google search-engine].
Nicola Lagioia
The visitor enters and says, "What a lot of books! Have you read them all?" ...The best answer is the one always used by Roberto Leydi: "And more, dear sir, many more," which freezes the adversary and plunges him into a state of awed admiration. But I find it merciless and angst-generating. Now I have fallen back on the riposte: "No, these are the ones I have to read by the end of the month. I keep the others in my office.
Umberto Eco
...when I look at and study the ranks of my books - for I have put the name of each author on the binding - I feel as if I am looking at the holy graves of those who wrote them.
Pietro Candido Decembrio
The best time to finally be and do what you want could be the worst time to be and do what you want. So if now is the worst time for you, this may be your best chance.
Franco Santoro
... one would like to be both [loved and feared], but as it is difficult to combine both love and fear, if one has to choose between them it is far safer to be feared than loved
Niccolò Machiavelli
Then we are living in a place abandoned by God," I said, disheartened."Have you found any places where God would have felt at home?" William asked me, looking down from his great height.
Umberto Eco
She became his Ariadne, leading him through the labyrinth of books, stopping now and then to pass another one to him.
Donna Leon
Winter is icummen in,Lhude sing Goddamm,Raineth drop and staineth slopAnd how the wind doth ramm!Sing: Goddamm.Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,An ague hath my ham.Freezeth river, turneth liverDamn you, sing: Goddamm.Goddamm, Goddamm, tis why I am,Goddamm.So 'gainst the winter's balmSing Goddamm, damm, sing GoddammSing Goddamm, sing Goddamm,DAMM.
Ezra Pound
How can I explain this? Why is it you can never hope to describe the emotion Africa creates?You are lifted.Out of whatever pit, unbound from whatever tie, released from whatever fear. You are lifted and you see it all from above. Your pit, your ties, your fear. you are lifted, you slowly rise like a hot-air balloon, and all you see is the space and the endless possibilities for losing yourself in it.
Francesca Marciano
The popular element "feels" but does not always know or understand; the intellectual element "knows" but does not always understand and in particular does not always feel.
Antonio Gramsci
It takes just one wave to capsize a boat, and one more to take it down.
Federico Chini
As Sommerfeld said in his famous text "Spectral Lines and Atomic Constitution," on which a generation of physicists learned the subject, "In the fine structure constant e is the representative of the electron theory, h the appropriate representative of the quantum theory, c comes from relativity and characterizes it in contrast to classical theory.
Emilio Segrè
What are we, in this boundless and glowing world?
Carlo Rovelli
It is hardly surprising that there are more things in heaven and earth, dear reader, than have been dreamed of in our philosophy - or in our physics.
Carlo Rovelli
A university student attending lectures on general relativity i the morning and others on quantum mechanics in the afternoon might be forgiven for thinking that his professors are fools, or have neglected to communicate with each other for at least a century.
Carlo Rovelli
That the nobility of Man, acquired in a hundred centuries of trial and error, lay in making himself the conquerer of matter, and that I had enrolled in chemistry because I wanted to maintain faithful to that nobility. That conquering matter is to understand it, and understanding matter is necessary to understanding the universe and ourselves: and that therefore Mendeleev’s Periodic Table, which just during those weeks we were laboriously learning to unravel, was poetry, loftier and more solemn than all the poetry we had swallowed doen in liceo; and come to think of it, it even rhymed! …[T]he chemistry and physics on which we fed, besides being in themselves nourishments vital in themselves, were the antidotes to Fascism … because they were clear and distinct and verifiable at every step, and not a tissue of lies and emptiness like the radio and newspapers.
Primo Levi
Repetita iuvant. Italy, a land of great saints, poets, sailors, artists, statesmen, businessmen, lawyers, intellectuals, professors, journalists, whores, gangsters, religious parasites and dickheads.
Carl William Brown
Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.
Benito Mussolini
There's nothing like love or incumbent death to make you realize how many things you still want to do.
Monica La Porta
The difference between the true and the false is only a prejudice of ours.
Italo Calvino
The hidden secret you are hiding is unbearable. The strength to come out is unbelievable. The joy once you come out is incredible. The relief I felt after coming out was life changing.
Sara Deuidicibus
Since defeat in the Struggle must always be envisaged, the preparation of one's own successors is as important as what one does for victory.
Antonio Gramsci
Good Morning! Good Afternoon! Good Night! These are not just mere greetings.They are powerful blessings, setting the best vibration for the day. Hence, whether it is morning, afternoon or night, make sure that you say your greeting right!
Franco Santoro
Remember to give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way
Valentina Giambanco
A Country is not a mere territory; the particular territory is only its foundation. The Country is the idea which rises upon that foundation; it is the sentiment of love, the sense of fellowship which binds together all the sons of that territory.
Giuseppe Mazzini
It's only and always the two of us who are involved, she who wants me to give her what nature and circumstances kept, I who can't give what she demands; she who gets angry at my inadequacy and out of spite wants to reduce me to nothing, as she has done with herself, I who have written for months and months to give her a form whose boundaries won't dissolve, and defeat her, and calm her, and so in turn, calm myself.
Elena Ferrante
If you have clutter in your real life, your tangible life, then it really adds to the emotional clutter in your mind.
Giuliana Rancic
An extreme case of the distortion of the memory of a committed guilty act is found in its suppression. Here, too, the borderline between good and bad faith can be vague; behind the "I don't know" and "I do not remember" that one hears in courtrooms there is sometimes the precise intent to lie, but at other times it is a fossilized lie, rigidified in a formula.
Primo Levi
There is nothing which deceives us as much as our own judgement.
Leonardo da Vinci
In love, all kinds of love, we wait. If I can't be your dawn, I will be your sunset!
Rossana Condoleo
Hind sight is 20/20.
Nicholai machiovelli
Back in time it seemed that having a sister were a tragedy. Instead it is one of the best presents my parents could have ever given me.
Sara Anzellotti
He who does not value life does not deserve it.
Leonardo da Vinci
You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.
Leonardo da Vinci
Content Is King, Distribution is Queen
Andrea Febbraio
Reciprocal marketing, promotions and links. In public good experiments, behavioral economists have demonstrated that the potential for reciprocal actions by players increases the rate of contribution to the public good, providing evidence for the importance of reciprocity in social situations.
Carl William Brown
…And the sound of the sea, like the wild-animal breath of the world itself, frightened them as it gasped and died at their feet.
Leonardo Sciascia
We buy things. We wear them or put them on our walls, or sit on them, but anyone who wants to can take them away from us. Or break them....Long after he's dead, someone else will own those stupid little boxes, and then someone after him, just as someone owned them before he did. But no one ever thinks of that: objects survive us and go on living. It's stupid to believe we own them. And it's sinful for them to be so important.
Donna Leon
The difference between Nazism and Communism is just the size of the leader's moustache.
Adriano Bulla
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
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
Injuries, therefore, should be inflicted all at once, that their ill savour being less lasting may the less offend; whereas, benefits should be conferred little by little, that so they may be more fully relished.
Niccolò Machiavelli
A world without problems is an illusion, so is a world without solutions.
Gianni Sarcone
They are coming to teach us good manners!" I replied in English. "But they won't succeed, because we are gods.
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
The father who would taste the essence of his fatherhood must turn back from the plane of his experience, take with him the fruits of his journey and begin again beside his child, marching step by step over the same old road.
Angelo Patri
Every attempt to fix eternity is an escape from reality. I will be plaguing my days with moments and minutes. For ever is too far!
Rossana Condoleo
She was wearing a sleeveless top that held her breasts in the most marvelous way, the balance between what it revealed and what it left to the imagination as poetic as a Shakespearean sonnet.
E.E. Giorgi
My idea is always to avoid nostalgia.
Miuccia Prada
Freedom is for the curious ones. Free is the one not influenced by taboos. Free is the one who reasons and evolves continuously, and refuses to accept anything without thinking.
Massimo Marino
A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.
Carlo M. Cipolla
No matter how high are one's estimates of human stupidity, one is repeatedly and recurrently startled by the fact that:a) people whom one had once judged rational and intelligent turn out to be unashamedly stupid.b) day after day, with unceasing monotony, one is harassed in one's activities by stupid individuals who appear suddenly and unexpectedly in the most inconvenient places and at the most improbable moments.
Carlo M. Cipolla
Hegel used to say that the familiar, precisely because it is familiar, remains unknown. That’s why we don't know so much about stupidity.
Carl William Brown
So I am perfectly free to buy any goods that are legally sold throughout Europe, provided that they can be delivered, even though they are not legal in Italy, even because in Italy only stupidity is legal.
Carl William Brown
Noi siam venuti al loco ov'i' t'ho dettoche tu vedrai le genti dolorosec'hanno perduto il ben de l'intelletto.We to the place have come, where I have told theeThou shalt behold the people dolorousWho have foregone the good of intellect.
Dante Alighieri
...the Moon, the enemy of poets...("Merchant's Two Sons")
Giambattista Basile
Jealousy is a fever that arises from a stupid, baseless excitement in our unthinking brain.Jealousy is a phenomenon of auto-suggestion.The woman you love has gone to bed with X. You hate X, you hate her, and you have perpetually before your eyes the vision of your loved one and X embracing in an act that fills you with horror.But you too in your time have deceived the woman you love and have done with Y what X did in bed with woman you love.Well, what remains in your skin ,your mind of Mrs Y? Nothing whatever. No more than X left with your woman.In other words, auto suggestion. Do you want evidence of that? Well, then, if you don't know the man, you imagine him to be hateful, offensive, repulsive, and you feel that if you met him you'd kill him.But, if you happen to see his photograph, you begin to realize that it's possible to look at him without horror; and believe me, if you were actually introduced to him you'd approach him with a cordial smile on your lips, look him in the eye without trembling and, if you have reached my degree of perfection, you'd actually be capable of cheerfully patting him on the back and telling him he's a good chap.In a not too distant future, reason and education will have driven home the lesson of the futility of jealousy.
Pitigrilli
Jealousy is a disease, it's like a poison.
Francesca Marciano