Venice Quotes
More Venice Quotes
Down and back at day dawn, Tramp from lake to lake, Washing brain and heart clean Every step we take. Leave to Robert Browning Beggars, fleas, and vines; Leave to mournful Ruskin Popish Apennines, Dirty stones of Venice, And his gas lamps seven, We've the stones of Snowdon And the lamps of heaven.
Charles Kingsley— Charles Kingsley, Letters and Memories, Aug., 1856. (Edited by Mrs. Kingsley).
Every painter must traverse for himself that distance from Paris to Aix (where Paul Cézanne worked a lot, fh) or from Venice to Toledo (where El Greco painted a lot, fh). Expression is for one knowing its own pivot. Every expressor relates solely to himself – that is the concern of the individualist.
marsden hartley— statement for catalogue of Forum exhibition 1916, reprinted in On art, p. 66-67, as quoted in Marsden Hartley, by Gail R. Scott, Abbeville Publishers, Cross River Press, 1988, New York p. 57
And there, at Venice, gave His body to that pleasant country’s earth, And his pure soul unto his captain Christ, Under whose colours he had fought so long.
— Bishop of Carlisle, Scene I
Once did she hold the gorgeous East in fee, And was the safeguard of the West: the worth Of Venice did not fall below her birth, Venice, the eldest child of Liberty.
william wordsworth— 1802 OfVenice.'On the Extinction of theVenetian Republic', l.1-4 (published1807).
He certainly over-heated himself at Venice by walking at a season when it is said that only Dogs and Englishmen are seen out of doors at noon, all else lie down in the middle of the day.
charles burney— Music, Men and Manners in France and Italy, 1770 (1969) p. 94.
The commonwealth of Venice in their armory have this inscription: "Happy is that city which in time of peace thinks of war."
robert burton— Section 2, member 6, Perturbations of the mind rectified. From himself, by resisting to the utmost, confessing his grief to a friend, etc.
Oh, London is a man’s town, there’s power in the air;And Paris is a woman’s town, with flowers in her hair;And it’s sweet to dream in Venice, and it’s great to study Rome;But when it comes to living, there is no place like home.
henry van dyke— Lines 9-12.
Horus non numero nisi serenas (I count only the hours that are serene.) is the motto of a sundial near Venice. There is a softness and a harmony in the words and in the thought unparalleled.
william hazlitt— "On a Sun-Dial" (New Monthly Magazine, October 1827)
Decade after decade, artists came to paint the light of Provincetown, and comparisons were made to the lagoons of Venice and the marshes of Holland, but then the summer ended and most of the painters left, and the long dingy undergarment of the gray New England winter, gray as the spirit of my mood, came down to visit.
norman mailer— Timothy Madden, in Tough Guys Don't Dance (1984), Ch. 1
Once did She hold the gorgeous east in fee; And was the safeguard of the west: the worth Of Venice did not fall below her birth, Venice, the eldest Child of Liberty.
william wordsworth— On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic, l. 1 (1807).
Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.
Henry James— "Venice," The Century Magazine, vol. XXV (November 1882), reprinted in Portraits of Places (1883) and later in Italian Hours (1909), ch. I: Venice, pt. II
This was Venice, the flattering and suspect beauty this city, half fairy tale and half tourist trap, in whose insalubrious air the arts once rankly and voluptuously blossomed, where composers have been inspired to lulling tones of somniferous eroticism.
thomas mann— Ch. 5, as translated by David Luke
Friends, citizens, and brethren. This our friend Hath given you by my charge to know of me Thus much, that if your ends and mine be one, As one our wrongs are, and this people's need One, toward the goal forefelt of our desire No heart shall beat, no foot shall press, no hand Strain, strive, and strike with steadier will than mine And faith more strenuous toward the purpose. This If ye believe not, here our hope hath end; If ye believe, here under happier stars Begins the date of Venice.
algernon charles swinburne— Faliero, Act III, Sc. 1.
Oh, London is a man’s town, there’s power in the air; And Paris is a woman’s town, with flowers in her hair; And it’s sweet to dream in Venice, and it’s great to study Rome; But when it comes to living, there is no place like home.
— Henry van Dyke America for Me (1909) Lines 9-12.
And there at Venice gave His body to that pleasant country's earth, And his pure soul unto his captain Christ, Under whose colours he had fought so long.
— Act IV, scene 1, line 97.
Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.
— "Venice," The Century Magazine, vol. XXV (November 1882), reprinted in Portraits of Places (1883) and later in Italian Hours (1909), ch. I: Venice, pt. 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.
If you deny me, fie upon your law! There is no power in the decrees of Venice. I stand for judgement: answer shall I have it?
— Shylock, scene i
[Michelangelo] Buonarotti commended it [Titian's painting] highly, saying that his colouring and his style pleased him very much but that it was a shame that in Venice they did not learn to draw well from the beginning.
Giorgio Vasari— 1568 Lives of theArtists (translated by George Bull,1965).
Kashmir was India’s paradise, an alpine “Switzerland” for the Moghuls, ancient Srinagar, its capital city on the banks of Jhelum River, with nine bridges and waterways reminiscent of Venice, and an adjacent lake of moored houseboats and gondola-like shikaras, provided a lyric spring and summer interlude…
Waldemar Hansen— "The Peacock Throne: The Drama of Mogul India", p.68
