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Quotes by Italian Authors
"Fascism was a counter-revolution against a revolution that never took place."
"Whoever you are, you will not write this book. I can tell you nothing. Do not call me again. Ever."
"When I need the idea, I can find it immediately. I have a horror of rewriting or deleting; the parts of my composition are carried in my head 'till I can write them down, even to the last note. Then I do not alter a jot."
"Art owes its origin to Nature herself... this beautiful creation, the world, supplied the first model, while the original teacher was that divine intelligence which has not only made us superior to the other animals, but like God Himself, if I may venture to say it."
"No press conference announcing a last film. I'd just steal away. Best way because, if by chance after two or three years something interesting comes up, I would not - like Sinatra - have to say: "Well, I've thought it over and decided to come back.""
"All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions."
"Thanks to the high standing which science has for so long attain and to the impartiality of the Nobel Prize Committee, the Nobel Prize for Physics is rightly considered everywhere as the highest reward within the reach of workers in Natural Philosophy."
"The devil is not the prince of matter; the devil is the arrogance of spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt. The devil is grim because he knows where he is going, and, in moving, he always returns from whence he came."
"It is always self-defeating to pretend to a generation younger than your own; it simply erases your own experience in history."
"God should not be called an individual substance, since the principal of individuation is matter."
"The facts of life are that a child who has seen war cannot be compared with a child who doesn't know what war is except from television."
"The appearance of a single great genius is more than equivalent to the birth of a hundred mediocrities."
"Distinctions drawn by the mind are not necessarily equivalent to distinctions in reality."
"The Korean War has also show quite clearly that in a major conflict manpower is as important as horsepower."
"We must always take from nature what we paint and always choose the most beautiful things."
"There is but one Church in which men find salvation, just as outside the ark of Noah it was not possible for anyone to be saved."
"Science is the captain, and practice the soldiers."
"These rough sketches, which are born in an instant in the heat of inspiration, express the idea of their author in a few strokes, while on the other hand too much effort and diligence sometimes saps the vitality and powers of those who never know when to leave off."
"A half dozen pictures would just about be enough for the life of an artist, for my life."
"I think that at a certain age, say fifteen or sixteen, poetry is like masturbation. But later in life good poets burn their early poetry, and bad poets publish it. Thankfully I gave up rather quickly."
"It [Foucault's Pendulum] can be very comforting for people of my generation, who ate disappointment for breakfast, lunch, and dinner."
"Fix your course to a star and you can navigate through any storm."
"For centuries, as pope and emperor tore each other apart in their quarrels over power, the excluded went on living on the fringe, like lepers, of whom true lepers are only the illustration ordained by God to make us understand this wondrous parable, so that in saying 'lepers' we would understand 'outcast, poor, simple, excluded, uprooted from the countryside, humiliated in the cities.' But we did not understand; the mystery of leprosy has continued to haunt us because we have not recognized the nature of the sign."
"Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with great inner drive, go so much further than people with vastly superior talent."
"I don't know whether these people are going to find themselves, but as they live their lives they have no choice but to face up to the image others have of them. They're forced to look at themselves in a mirror, and they often manage to glimpse something of themselves."
"Obstacles cannot crush me every obstacle yields to stern resolve."
"Time abides long enough for those who make use of it."
"In any case, whenever technical progress opened a new window into the surrounding world, I felt the urge to look through this window, hoping to see something unexpected."
"What is fair in men, passes away, but not so in art."
"You sin in thinking bad about people - but, often, you guess right."
"Quando ouvimos os sinos, ouvimos aquilo que já trazemos em nós mesmos como modelo. Sou da opinião que não se deverá desprezar aquele que olhar atentamente para as manchas da parede, para os carvões sobre a grelha, para as nuvens, ou para a correnteza da água, descobrindo, assim, coisas maravilhosas. O gênio do pintor há-de se apossar de todas essas coisas para criar composições diversas: luta de homens e de animais, paisagens, monstros, demônios e outras coisas fantásticas. Tudo, enfim, servirá para engrandecer o artista."
"In a novel, my feelings and sense of outrage can find a broader means of expression which would be more symbolic and applicable to many European countries."
"Reprove your friend in secret and praise him in public."
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