Italy Quotes - 2
More Italy Quotes
Three poets, in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpassed, The next in majesty, in both the last: The force of Nature could no farther go; To make a third, she joined the former two.
john dryden— 1688 'Epigram on Milton', engraved on the frontispiece to the 1688 edition of Paradise Lost. The three poets are Homer, Virgil and Milton.
Some of the opera houses in Italy had to be burnt down because people could neither see nor hear. They gave up seeing years ago, but they did enjoy the music.
philip johnson— 1960 Informal talk, Architectural Association School of Architecture, 28 Nov. Collected in Writings (1979).
A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority, from his not having seen what it is expected a man should see.
— 1776 Remark,11 Apr. Quoted in James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.3.
Lump the whole thing! Say that the Creator made Italy from designs by Michael Angelo!
— 1869 The Innocents Abroad.
Arma virumque cano,Troiae qui primus ab oris Italiam fato profugus Laviniaque venit Litora. Thisis a tale of arms and of a man.Fated to be an exile, he wasthe first tosail fromtheland of Troyand reach Italy, at its Lavinian shore.
— Aeneid, opening lines (translated byW F Jackson Knight).
In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, blood shed they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo daVinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.
Harry Lime— Harry Lime's speech to Holly Martins as he leaves the great wheel, The Third Man. This phrase was added to the script by Welles who played Harry Lime. 1949
In 16th-century Italy there lived Lodovico Gonzaga, a 16-year old seminarist who was very fond of playing ball. Once a certain priest passing by wondered if for a future priest the youth was too keen on his pursuit and asked him:"What would you do if you learned that in half an hour the end of the world was coming?" To which Lodovico replied: "I'd play on." According to the Russian thinker Georgy Fedotov, the importance of culture lies in precisely that: we go on playing ball on the verge of Doomsday...
— Chromaticism, trans. Romela Kohanovskaya (1996, ISBN 371865704x), Introduction, p. ix
If you want to maintain the superiority of your state at the present time, you must quickly enter into a coalition with Germany and Italy and thus restrain Europe and create a firm foundation for imperial policy in the Far East.
kōki hirota— Quoted in "Japan at the Crossroads" - Page 64 - by Walter Smith - 1936
It is precisely the immediate and thorough eradication of the Jews in Italy which is the special interest of the present internal political situation and the general security in Italy.
ernst kaltenbrunner— To Herbert Kappler, October 11. Quoted in "The Battle for Rome" - Page 77 - by Robert Katz - History - 2003
The partisan situation in the Italian theater, particularly central Italy, has deteriorated to such an extent that it constitutes a serious danger to troops, supply lines, war industry and economic potential. The fight against the partisans must be carried out with all means at our disposal and with utmost severity. I will protect any commander who exceeds our usual restraint in the choice of methods in executing one's orders is better than failure or neglect to act.
albert kesselring— June 17, 1944. Quoted in "Mussolini: The Last 600 Days of Il Duce" - Page 131 - by Ray Moseley - History - 2004
From the vine-land, from the Rhine-land,From the Shannon, from the Scheldt,From the ancient homes of genius,From the sainted home of Celt,From Italy, from Hungary,All as brothers join and come,To the sinew-bracing bugle,And the foot-propelling drum;Too proud beneath the starry flag to die, and keep secureThe liberty they dreamed of by the Danube, Elbe, and Suir.
— John Savage, Muster of the North; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 220.
I am absolutely sure to be the most democratic man to ever become Prime Minister in Italy.
Silvio Berlusconi— ASCA (25 January 2002)
The life in Italy is the life of a wealthy country, consumptions haven't diminished, it's hard to find seats on planes, our restaurants are full of people.
Silvio Berlusconi— Denying the heaviness of the Italian crisis, during the news conference after the end of the G20 summit held in Cannes (3-4 November 2011), as reported in "Napolitano ammonisce: attuare impegni. Premier: la crisi non c'è, ristoranti pieni" in Il Messaggero (4 November 2011), and "Silvio Berlusconi shrugs off IMF's financial checks on Italy. Prime minister insists Italy is in good health, with debts under control, and points to full restaurants as proof of strength" in The Guardian (4 November 2011)
It is from Italy that we are flinging this to the world, our manifesto of burning and overwhelming violence, with which we today establish “ Futurism ,” for we intend to free this nation from its fetid cancer of professors, archaeologists, tour guides, and antiquarians.
filippo tommaso marinetti— Original text:
È dall’Italia, che noi lanciamo pel mondo questo nostro manifesto di violenza travolgente e incendiaria, col quale fondiamo oggi il «Futurismo», perchè vogliamo liberare questo paese dalla sua fetida cancrena di professori, d’archeologhi, di ciceroni e d’antiquarii.p. 52
The compliments you are about to pay could only sadden me, because what you love in our dear peninsula is exactly the object of our hatreds. Indeed, you crisscross Italy only to meticulously sniff out the traces of our oppressive past, and you are happy, insanely happy, if you have the good fortune to carry home some miserable stone on which our ancestors have trodden.
filippo tommaso marinetti— Quoted in: Anthony L. Geist, Jose B. Monle-N, Modernism and Its Margins: Reinscribing Cultural Modernity from Spain and Latin America. Taylor & Francis, 1999, p. 57.
Our program is simple: we wish to govern Italy. They ask us for programs but there are already too many. It is not programs that are wanting for the salvation of Italy but men and will power.
benito mussolini— Speech at Udine (20 September 1922) "The Question of Regime. The Monarchy and Fascism," quoted in A History of Civilization (1955) by Crane Brinton, John B. Christopher, and Robert Lee Wolff, p. 520
These Moors cultivated the sciences with success, and taught Spain and Italy for five centuries.
voltaire— Voltaire, A Philosophical Dictionary, J. and H. L. Hunt, 1843, p.172
These Moors cultivated the sciences with success, and taught Spain and Italy for five centuries.
voltaire— Voltaire, A Philosophical Dictionary, J. and H. L. Hunt, 1843, p.172
These Moors cultivated the sciences with success, and taught Spain and Italy for five centuries.
— Voltaire, A Philosophical Dictionary, J. and H. L. Hunt, 1843, p.172
From the vine-land, from the Rhine-land, From the Shannon, from the Scheldt, From the ancient homes of genius, From the sainted home of Celt, From Italy, from Hungary, All as brothers join and come, To the sinew-bracing bugle, And the foot-propelling drum; Too proud beneath the starry flag to die, and keep secure The liberty they dreamed of by the Danube, Elbe, and Suir.
— John Savage, Muster of the North; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 220.
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed - they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love and five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!
— Orson Welles as the character Harry Lime in the film The Third Man (1949)
Once Italy is in, with an appreciated currency, the country will soon be back on the ropes, just as in 1992, when the currency came under attack.
— Rudiger Dornbusch, "Euro fantasies", Foreign Affairs, vol. 75, n. 5, p. 115, September/October 1996.
What has happened, it turns out, is that by going on the euro, Spain and Italy in effect reduced themselves to the status of Third World countries that have to borrow in someone else’s currency, with all the loss of flexibility that implies.
— Paul Krugman, "Paul Krugman Does Modern Money Theory: Today’s Links"
After the conquest of Afric, Greece, the lesser Asia, and Syria were brought into Italy all the sorts of their Mala, which we interprete apples, and might signify no more at first: but were afterwards applied to many other foreign fruits.
— Sir William Temple, On Gardening.
Italy, my Italy! Queen Mary's saying serves for me (When fortune's malice Lost her Calais) "Open my heart and you will see Graved inside of it, 'Italy.'"
Robert Browning— Robert Browning, De Gustibus. ii.
Venice once was dear, The pleasant place of all festivity, The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy.
lord byron— Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1818), Canto IV, Stanza 3.
A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority, from his not having seen what it is expected a man should see.
— Samuel Johnson, Boswell, Life of Johnson.
Come now: Do we really think that the gods are everywhere called by the same names by which they are addressed by us? But the gods have as many names as there are languages among humans. For it is not with the gods as with you: you are Velleius wherever you go, but Vulcan is not Vulcan in Italy and in Africa and in Spain.
— De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods), Book I, Chapter 30.
Adult's grave in Rome, Italy
— Translation: "What you are we were and what we are you will become"
