Italian Author Quotes

Don't forget that even our most obscene vices nearly always bear the seal of sullen greatness.

Gesualdo Bufalino

But what is history, Don Ferrante would often say, without politics? A guide who walks on and on with no one following to learn the road, so that his every step is wasted; just as politics without history is like a man who walks along without a guide.

Alessandro Manzoni

The one sole thing in myself in which I glory is that I see in myself nothing in which I can glory.

Catherine of Genoa

When I write stories I am like someone who is in her own country, walking along streets that she has known since she was a child, between walls and trees that are hers.

Natalia Ginzburg

Let him look to it, who is pleased with the game of Tarocco, that the only signification of this word Tarocco, is stupid, foolish, simple, fit only to be used by Bakers, Coblers, and the vulgar, to play at most for the fourth part of a Carlino, at Tarocchi, or at Trionfi, or any Sminckiate whatever: which in every way signifies only foolery and idleness, feasting the eye with the Sun, and the Moon, and the twelve (signs) as children do.

Francesco Berni

Lose thou no time that seek'st to garner fame,
Or wouldst deserve the favor of thy dame.

Giovanni Fiorentino

Men are just like unlit lamps: in themselves they are no good for anything, but, when lit, they can be handy to have around the house.

Practise in everything a certain nonchalance that shall conceal design and show that what is done and said is done without effort and almost without thought.

Baldassare Castiglione

Tyrants in the course of time must eventually be overthrown because of the continual opposition of the oppressed. It is an unchanging Law, a constant rule, the penalty is certain, albeit that it is very slow coming to fruition.

Francesco Mario Pagano

Each person should display her own particular gifts for study. For no one is safe who strives beyond her abilities; and thus it is safer to trust in reason than in men's opinions.

They say there is a difference between actual temperature and perceived temperature, but in the bearable heaviness of being the actual measure is no doubt the weight we perceive.

Fausto Cercignani

PRODUCER: Let's get to the point, let's get to the point. This is all chat.
FATHER: Right then! But a fact is like a sack — it won't stand up if it's empty. To make it stand up, first you have to put in it all the reasons and feelings that caused it in the first place.

Luigi Pirandello

Your tiny hand is frozen, let me warm it in mine.

Giuseppe Giacosa

The greater the attention to the sentence, the more laboriously the story flows.

It has always been more difficult for a man to keep than to get; for, in the one case, fortune aids, which often assists injustice; but, in the other case, sense is required. Therefore, we often see a person deficient in cleverness rise to wealth; and then, from want of sense, roll head over heels to the bottom.

Giambattista Basile

Every evening words, not stars, light the sky. No rest in life like life itself.

Man, by his very nature, tends to give himself an explanation of the world into which he is born. And this is what distinguishes him from the other species. Every individual, even the least intelligent, the lowest of outcasts, from childhood on gives himself some explanation of the world. And with it he manages to live. And without it, he would sink into madness.

The best thing for a man to do is to be born and, being born, to die at once.

Because those, who twit others with their faults, should look at home.

Woman over money is like the sun upon ice, which is all the time: melting and consuming it.

Bernardo Dovizi

All books avoid, for they
Are the disgrace of our humanity,
And the assassins of the human race.
Mark well my words: the true
Philosophy consists in growing fat.

Giovanni Battista Lorenzi

When the ground is soft
It may be worked with any kind of tool.

Giovanni Maria Cecchi

Free is the vote, the right inviolate,
But victory falls to him whose aim is straight.

Francesco Dall'Ongaro

It is better to wear rags in honesty than brocade in dishonor.

The man of mark is never appreciated, either in his lifetime or in his own country.

Camillo Federici