Italy Quotations

Italy is a country in the south of Europe.

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• L'Italia farà da sè.
  • Translation: "Italy will take care of itself."
  • Italian proverb; a common expression when Italy was in the process of reunification.

• For wheresoe'er I turn my ravish'd eyes, Gay gilded scenes and shining prospects rise, Poetic fields encompass me around, And still I seem to tread on classic ground.
  • Joseph Addison, A Letter from Italy.

• Gli Italiani tutti ladroni.
  • All Italians are plunderers.
  • Napoleon Bonaparte, when in Italy.
• Non tutti, ma buona parte.
  • Not all but a good part (good part is buona parte, intending Buonaparte).
  • Supposed response by a lady who overheard him.
  • Reported in Samuel Taylor, Biographia Literaria, Satyrane's Letters No 2 (Ed 1870). Also reported as "I Francesci son tutti ladri", "Non tutti ma - buona parte" in Pasquin, when the French were in possession of Rome; see Catherine Taylor's Letters from Italy Vol I P 239 (Ed 1840) Quoted also by Charlotte Eaton, Rome in the Nineteenth Cent Vol II P 120 (Ed 1852).

• 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, De Gustibus. ii.

• Venice once was dear, The pleasant place of all festivity, The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy.
  • Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto iv, Stanza 3.

• Italia, Italia, O tu cui feo la sorte, Dono infelice di bellezza, ond' hai Funesta dote d'infiniti guai Che in fronte scritti per gran dogha porte
  • Italia! O Italia! thou who hast The fatal gift of beauty, which became A funeral dower of present woes and past, On thy sweet brow is sorrow plough'd by shame, And annals graved in characters of flame
  • Vicenzo Filicaja, Italia, English rendering by Lord Byron, Childe Harold, Canto IV, St 42.

• Beyond the Alps lies Italy.
  • James William Foley, Graduation Time Expression found in Livy Ab Urbe Bk 21 30.

• 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 Graham Greene film, The Third Man (1949).

• Throughout all Italy beside, What does one find, but Want and Pride? Farces of Superstitious folly, Decay, Distress and Melancholy: The Havock of Despotick Power, A Country rich, its owners poor; Unpeopled towns, and Lands untilled, Bodys uncloathed, and mouths unfilled. The nobles miserably great, In painted Domes and empty state, Too proud to work, too poor to eat, No arts the meaner sort employ, They nought approve, nor ought enjoy. Each blown from misery grows a Saint, He prays from Idleness and fast from Want.
  • John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey (1729), quoted in Jeremy Black, The British and the Grand Tour, (1985), p. 174

• 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.

• France exists so that you can drive to Italy.
  • James May, Top Gear.

• L'ltalie est un nom geographique.
  • Italy is only a geographical expression
  • Klemens Wenzel, Prince von Metternich to Lord Palmerston (1847); reported in his Letter to Count Prokesch-Osten (November 19, 1849), Correspondence of Prokesch II 343; First used by Metternich in his Memorandum to the Great Powers (August 2, 1814).

• On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome
  • Edgar Allen Poe, Helen

• My soul to-day Is far away Sailing the Vesuvian Bay
  • Thomas Buchanan Read, Drifting.

• Italy, and the spring and first love all together should suffice to make the gloomiest person happy.
  • Bertrand Russell, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell‎ (1967), p. 185.

• Some jay of Italy, Whose mother was her painting, hath betray’d him: Poor I am stale, a garment out of fashion.
  • William Shakespeare, Cymbeline, Act iii, Scene 4.

• Report of fashions in proud Italy, Whose manners still our apish nation Limps after in base imitation.
  • William Shakespeare, Richard II, Act ii, Scene 1.

• How beautiful is sunset when the glow Of Heaven descends upon a land like thee, Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy!
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Julian and Maddalo, lines 55-57.

• Comme on craint peu de choquer la vanité, on arrive fort vite en Italie au ton de l'intimité, et à dire des choses personnelles.
  • Translated: "Because one has little fear of shocking vanity in Italy, people adopt an intimate tone very quickly and discuss personal things".
  • Stendhal, La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma) (1839), Chapter 6.

• Enough, enough, enough! Say no more! Lump the whole thing! say the Creator made Italy from designs by Michael Angelo!
  • Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad. Twain humorously depicts tourists being told that most every monument in Italy was designed or painted by "Michael Angelo", oblivious to the historic significance of Michelangelo.

• You may have the universe if I may have Italy.
  • Giuseppe Verdi, reported in Michael Angelo Musmanno, The Story of the Italians in America (1965), p. 255.

See also

• Naples
• Rome

External links

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See Also:

• Arts: Education: Colleges and Departments: Europe: Italy
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