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Italy Quotes

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Italy Quotes

“Local fog in Venice has a name: nebbia. It obliterates all reflections ... and everything that has a shape: buildings, people, colonnades, bridges, statues. Boat services are canceled, airplanes neither arrive, nor take off for weeks, stores are closed and mail ceases to litter one’s threshold. The effect is as though some raw hand had turned all those enfilades inside out and wrapped the lining around the city... the fog is thick, blinding, and immobile... this is a time for reading, for burning electricity all day long, for going easy on self-deprecating thoughts of coffee, for listening to the BBC World Service, for going to bed early. In short, a time for self-oblivion, induced by a city that has ceased to be seen. Unwittingly, you take your cue from it, especially if, like it, you’ve got company. Having failed to be born here, you at least can take some pride in sharing its invisibility...”

ReflectionCoffeeFogOblivionCityItalyVeniceBrodsky
Book:Watermark
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“Amor, ch'al cor gentile ratto s'apprende prese costui de la bella persona che mi fu tolta; e 'l modo ancor m'offende. Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona, Mi prese del costui piacer sì forte, Che, come vedi, ancor non m'abbandona..." "Love, which quickly arrests the gentle heart, Seized him with my beautiful form That was taken from me, in a manner which still grieves me. Love, which pardons no beloved from loving, took me so strongly with delight in him That, as you see, it still abandons me not...”

LovePoetryItalianItalyMedieval Literature
Book:Inferno
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“SIENA I wander down the steps along the walls of bricks and high houses - down to the waters that lay deep. Streaming down from the hill on which the old city was built with a tower standing high, that reaches up not far from the grave that these waters lay in. Alabaster is the hand that reaches in it and cold is the heart that touches the pale divine. Beating fast after climbing back to the light and narrow streets - I found now what it seeks. Descending down, down to the hidden stream - oh Siena, my goddess without a pomegranate seed.”

LoveArtPoetryLiteraturePoemItalyAestheticsDark AcademiaTuscany
Author:Laura Chouette
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“MARBLE GRAVES The silver moon stands silent between two cypresses - its light leaning against the walls of the old palazzo that lays in ruin. Hidden behind olive groves lays the tomb of forgotten men and unsung heroes. Their souls found peace within the Allgrove's of singing cicadas and rustling long grass. The marble is heavy and their graves cool and dark - deep is their sleep eternal their demise. The moon is slowly covered by a shroud of clouds, cypresses now lay in darkness - silence.”

ArtPoetryLiteraturePoemItalyAestheticsDark AcademiaTuscany
Author:Laura Chouette
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“SAN GIMIGNANO The towers align the hills like crowns of heavy stones; Empty are the dreams of the ones that built them long ago. The thirst for power still stands frozen in its tracks - the only witnesses of it stand high against the silver sky. The distance gets smaller, and the towers become higher. So many have fallen, laying their family's name to rest, in gentle forgetfulness.”

LoveArtPoetryLiteraturePoemItalyAestheticsDark AcademiaTuscany
Author:Laura Chouette
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“A POET'S HOMAGE TO FLORENCE What heart dares to look upon a city so golden and is not moved to write a single line? Whose soul can bear such beauty and not praise it with all its words? May there be poets without a page left, artists with no colour to give a memory of you; and even lovers who refuse to burn? My love, your likeness is like marble that makes the altar of paradise.”

ArtPoetryLiteraturePoemItalyAestheticsDark AcademiaFlorenceTuscany
Author:Laura Chouette
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“Hues of pale green, on delicate olive branches the soft rustling of somberness along the fields of gold that lay themselves to gentle rest after another long summer. I have nothing to bury under them except my own heart -that is my soul's greatest regret, once my lines begin to fill in autumn, under the velvet gloom of shortening days. The admiration of the Florentine sun had doomed my words to become eventually a remembrance once September falls in October's pale hands. I shall have nothing to grieve for once the winter arrives, coming over the distant hills and laying bare the orchards along his way. I doomed them to become ruins by overthinking, hoping - at least once too often - for change; So, let it be then. I will mourn my mere passion for life in the presence of death - though my art may be eternal.”

LoveArtPoetryLiteraturePoemItalyAestheticsDark AcademiaTuscany
Author:Laura Chouette
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“There are many of us who live alongside others, less fortunate, watching them go through everyday suffering for one reason or another, and we’re not moving even our little finger to help them. It’s in human nature, unfortunately: for the most part, the only people we genuinely care about are ourselves. However, once in a while we encounter different species, different kind of human beings among us: full of compassion, willing and wanting to help, and doing so with joy and happiness. Those are a rarity. But you know what, my dear? Being one of them is not a special calling- it’s a choice. So what will you choose, huh?”

RelationshipInspirational QuoteTeenHumanity And SocietyItalyFiction NovelComing Of Age NovelFlorenceAdventure FictionEmotional RollercoasterThe Rebirth Of FrancescaYoleen Valai
Book:The Rebirth of Francesca
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“Circumstances intervened again and his family connections within the newly formed Central Intelligence Agency, combined with their economic and political clout, hastened his Naturalization as a U.S. Citizen, enabling his family to safely take him back to Italy only a few years later, this time to their property in Firenze. On arrival Tonio’s soul awakened with the deepest and most silent joy. The past few years had been a bad dream. He was home. Everything was right. The sky, the buildings, the people, the smells, the sounds, all of it, even the language of the birds. He felt he would never leave again. Untold Stories of Tonio”

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Author:Marco M. Pardi
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“At Bramasole, the first secret spot that draws me outside is a stump and board bench on a high terrace overlooking the lake and valley. Before I sit down, I must bang the board against a tree to knock off all the ants. Then I'm happy. With a stunted oak tree for shelter and a never-ending view, I am hidden. No one knows where I am. The nine-year-old's thrill of the hideout under the hydrangea comes back: My mother is calling me and I am not answering.”

HomeGardenItalySense Of Place
Book:Bringing Tuscany Home: Sensuous Style From the Heart of Italy
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“Eva stroked the back of my neck with one hand and ran her other hand up and down my chest. She broke away from my tongue and kissed my lips over and under. Then she sat slightly back and looked at my face. I looked at her presence with a flush of wonder and at her face which was partially hidden by her long, auburn locks, which had fallen in from the sides. She parted her hair away from her face deftly with her hands and then leaned forward and kissed me first under my right eye and then under my left eye. It was the sexiest moment of my life. “You should close the door,” she told me.”

SelfFantasyTravelDiscoveryNostalgiaGermanyVietnamItalyMotorcycleRoad Trip
Book:Driving Toward Destiny
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“Because the world is so corrupted, misspoken, unstable, exaggerated and unfair, one should trust only what one can experience with one's own senses, and this makes the senses stronger in Italy than anywhere in Europe. This is why, Barzini says, Italians will tolerate hideously incompetent generals, presidents, tyrants, professors, bureaucrats, journalists and captains of industry, but will never tolerate incompetent "opera singers, conductors, ballerinas, courtesans, actors, film directors, cooks, tailors . . ." In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down.”

BeautyItalyTravel QuotesTravelingInspirtationalItaly Journey
Book:Eat, Pray, Love
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“Eccolo!” he exclaimed. At the same moment the ground gave way, and with a cry she fell out of the wood. Light and beauty enveloped her. She had fallen on to a little open terrace, which was covered with violets from end to end. “Courage!” cried her companion, now standing some six feet above. “Courage and love.” She did not answer. From her feet the ground sloped sharply into view, and violets ran down in rivulets and streams and cataracts, irrigating the hillside with blue, eddying round the tree stems, collecting into pools in the hollows, covering the grass with spots of azure foam. But never again were they in such profusion; this terrace was the well-head, the primal source whence beauty gushed out to water the earth. Standing at its brink, like a swimmer who prepares, was the good man. But he was not the good man that she had expected, and he was alone. George had turned at the sound of her arrival. For a moment he contemplated her, as one who had fallen out of heaven. He saw radiant joy in her face, he saw the flowers beat against her dress in blue waves. The bushes above them closed. He stepped quickly forward and kissed her…”

RomanceBlueKissFlowersItalyFirst KissViolets
Book:A Room with a View
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“Mr. Herriton, don’t – please, Mr. Herriton – a dentist. His father’s a dentist.” Philip gave a cry of personal disgust and pain. He shuddered all over, and edged away from his companion. A dentist! A dentist at Monteriano. A dentist in fairyland! False teeth and laughing gas and the tilting chair at a place which knew the Etruscan League, and the Pax Romana, and Alaric himself, and the Countess Matilda, and the Middle Ages, all fighting and holiness, and the Renaissance, all fighting and beauty! He thought of Lilia no longer. He was anxious for himself: he feared that Romance might die.”

RomanceItalyDentistDisgust
Book:Where Angels Fear to Tread
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“Vegetables cooked for salads should always be on the crisp side, like those trays of zucchini and slender green beans and cauliflowerets in every trattoria in Venice, in the days when the Italians could eat correctly. You used to choose the things you wanted: there were tiny potatoes in their skins, remember, and artichokes boiled in olive oil, as big as your thumb, and much tenderer...and then the waiter would throw them all into an ugly white bowl and splash a little oil and vinegar over them, and you would have a salad as fresh and tonic to your several senses as La Primavera. It can still be done, although never in the same typhoidic and enraptured air. You can still find little fresh vegetables, and still know how to cook them until they are not quite done, and chill them, and eat them in a bowl.”

FoodCookingVegetablesPotatoesItalyCauliflowerGreen BeansZucchini
Book:How to Cook a Wolf
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“Aboard the gondola, Giacomo Foscarini sat facing Mathias. They were crossing the Canal Grande, then they would navigate around San Marco and return. Foscarini loved to travel around Venice this way. They stopped briefly at a mooring near the bridge to the Rialto, and Foscarini had a servant fetch green olives, fresh Piacenza cheese, a few sausages from Modena, and wine that had just been delivered from Crete. The nobleman often dined aboard his gondola, looking out over the city, watching his world. "Seen from this vantage point, Venice doesn't seem like it's in any of its terrible troubles at all magister," said Foscarini.”

FoodItalyVeniceGondolaWater View
Book:The Lion and the Rose
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“I felt that the metal of my spirit, like a bar of iron that is softened and bent by a persistent flame, was being gradually softened and bent by the troubles that oppressed it. In spite of myself, I was conscious of a feeling of envy for those who did not suffer from such troubles, for the wealthy and the privileged; and this envy, I observed, was accompanied—still against my will—by a feeling of bitterness towards them, which, in turn, did not limit its aim to particular persons or situations, but, as if by an uncontrollable bias, tended to assume the general, abstract character of a whole conception of life. In fact, during those difficult days, I came very gradually to feel that my irritation and my intolerance of poverty were turning into a revolt against injustice, and not only against the injustice which struck at me personally but the injustice from which so many others like me suffered. I was quite aware of this almost imperceptible transformation of my subjective resentments into objective reflections and states of mind, owing to the bent of my thoughts which led always and irresistibly in the same direction: owing also to my conversation, which, without my intending it, alway harped upon the same subject. I also noticed in myself a growing sympathy for those political parties which proclaimed their struggle against the evils and infamies of the society to which, in the end I had attributed the troubles that beset me—a society which, as I thought, in reference to myself, allowed its best sons to languish and protected its worst ones. Usually, and in the simpler, less cultivated people, this process occurs without their knowing it, in the dark depths of consciousness where, by a kind of mysterious alchemy, egoism is transmuted into altruism, hatred into love, fear into courage; but to me, accustomed as I was to observing and studying myself, the whole thing was clear and visible, as though I were watching it happen in someone else; and yet I was aware the whole time that I was being swayed by material subjective factors, that I was transforming purely personal motives into universal reasons.”

CharacterFree WillAlienationItalyObjectivitySubjectivityHegelCategorical ImperativeEssentialismPolitical AnimalUniversal Reasons
Book:Contempt
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“Its magnificence was indescribable, and its magnitude was inconceivable. She felt overwhelmed in the presence of its greatness. Pg 87”

BookFictionNovelNew YorkImmigrationHistorical FictionWorld War IWomen S RightsItalyProhibitionSuffrage1920sStatue Of LibertyWwiEllis IslandCafe SocietyHell S KitchenSuffragist MovementForty Years In A DayItalian American Book40 Years And A Day40 Years In A DayBest Historical FictionDianne VigoritoMona MarzanoMona RodriguezNew Historical FictionTop Fiction
Author:Mona Rodriguez FORTY YEARS IN A DAY
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“Confession is good for the soul even after the soul has been claimed” (p. 381).”

BookFictionNovelNew YorkImmigrationHistorical FictionWorld War IWomen S RightsItalyProhibitionSuffrage1920sStatue Of LibertyWwiEllis IslandCafe SocietyHell S KitchenSuffragist MovementForty Years In A DayItalian American Book40 Years And A Day40 Years In A DayBest Historical FictionDianne VigoritoMona MarzanoMona RodriguezNew Historical FictionTop Fiction
Author:Mona Rodriguez FORTY YEARS IN A DAY
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“Rome and New York were impressive, but they knew they were. They had the beauty of a vain woman who had squeezed herself into her favourite dress after hours of careful self worship. There was a raw, feral beauty about this landscape that was totally unselfconscious but no less real...There was no pomp or vainty here; this was an innocent, natural beauty, the best kind, like a woman first thing in the morning, lit up by the sun streaming through a window, who doesn't quite believe it when you tell her how beautiful she is.”

BeautifulBeautyNew YorkWomanItalianNew York CityRomeItalyBeautiful WritingPersonificationTuscanyBuildings
Book:Old Country
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“Let me ask you something, in all the years that you have...undressed in front of a gentleman has he ever asked you to leave? Has he ever walked out and left? No? It's because he doesn't care! He's in a room with a naked girl, he just won the lottery. I am so tired of saying no, waking up in the morning and recalling every single thing I ate the day before, counting every calorie I consumed so I know just how much self loathing to take into the shower. I'm going for it. I have no interest in being obese, I'm just through with the guilt. So this is what I'm going to do, I'm going to finish this pizza, and then we are going to go watch the soccer game, and tomorrow we are going to go on a little date and buy ourselves some bigger jeans.”

LoveFunnySelf EsteemJeansBody ImageItaly
Author:Elizabeth Gilbert
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“First of all, let's get one thing straight. Your Italy and our Italia are not the same thing. Italy is a soft drug peddled in predictable packages, such as hills in the sunset, olive groves, lemon trees, white wine, and raven-haired girls. Italia, on the other hand, is a maze. It's alluring, but complicated. It's the kind of place that can have you fuming and then purring in the space of a hundred meters, or in the course of ten minutes. Italy is the only workshop in the world that can turn out both Botticellis and Berlusconis.”

HumorItalyItalians
Book:La Bella Figura: A Field Guide to the Italian Mind
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“Noi leggeveamo un giorno per diletto Di Lancialotto, come amor lo strinse; Soli eravamo e senza alcun sospetto Per più fiate gli occhi ci sospinse Quella lettura, e scolorocci il viso; Ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse. Quando leggemmo il disiato riso Esser baciato da cotanto amante, Questi, che mai da me non fia diviso, La bocca mi baciò tutto tremante. Galeotto fu il libro e chi lo scrisse: Quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante." ""We were reading one day, to pass the time, of Lancelot, how love had seized him. We were alone, and without any suspicion And time and time again our eyes would meet over that literature, and our faces paled, and yet one point alone won us. When we had read how the desired smile was kissed by so true a lover, This one, who never shall be parted from me, kissed my mouth, all a-tremble. Gallehault was the book and he who wrote it That day we read no further.”

ItalianItalyInfernoL Inferno
Author:Dante Alighieri
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“In winter you wake up in this city, especially on Sundays, to the chiming of its innumerable bells, as though behind your gauze curtains a gigantic china teaset were vibrating on a silver tray in the pearl-gray sky. You fling the window open and the room is instantly flooded with this outer, peal-laden haze, which is part damp oxygen, part coffee and prayers. No matter what sort of pills, and how many, you've got to swallow this morning, you feel it's not over for you yet. No matter, by the same token, how autonomous you are, how much you've been betrayed, how thorough and dispiriting in your self-knowledge, you assume there is still hope for you, or at least a future. (Hope, said Francis Bacon, is a good breakfast but bad supper.) This optimism derives from the haze, from the prayer part of it, especially if it's time for breakfast. On days like this, the city indeed acquires a porcelain aspect, what with all its zinc-covered cupolas resembling teapots or upturned cups, and the tilted profile of campaniles clinking like abandoned spoons and melting in the sky. Not to mention the seagulls and pigeons, now sharpening into focus, now melting into air. I should say that, good though this place is for honeymoons, I've often thought it should be tried for divorces also - both in progress and already accomplished. There is no better backdrop for rapture to fade into; whether right or wrong, no egoist can star for long in this porcelain setting by crystal water, for it steals the show. I am aware, of course, of the disastrous consequence the above suggestion may have for hotel rates here, even in winter. Still, people love their melodrama more than architecture, and I don't feel threatened. It is surprising that beauty is valued less than psychology, but so long as such is the case, I'll be able to afford this city - which means till the end of my days, and which ushers in the generous notion of the future.”

ItalyVeniceBrodsky
Author:Joseph Brodsky
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