Stefanoni Italy Quotes

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… ~ E.M. Forster

The more fashionable doctors in Italy, began to delegate to slaves the manual attentions they deemed necessary for their patients ... that the art of medicine went to ruin. ~ Andreas Vesalius

A player who dives and wins a penalty in Portugal, or Spain or Italy is considered clever, experienced, cunning, someone who understands the game. In England a player who wins a penalty like that is a cheat. ~ Jose Mourinho

Venice, Italy, survives 365 days out of every year in water; New Orleans can survive a few days of water if it has to. ~ Billy Tauzin

He had not colored the leaves in yet, and the trunk and its branches looked for the moment less like a tree and more like a great brown river, the Nile, the Amazon, the Benedetto and Flynn river of blood, and there at its isthmus was this one child, so that it seemed that all of these people, from Poland, from Italy, from Ireland and the Bronx and Brooklyn, had come together for no other reason than to someday produce Robert Benedetto, in an event as meant, as important as that one in Bethlehem that he had learned about in catechism class at St. Stannie's. ~ Anna Quindlen

As time passed there was no more buying food, no money, no supplies. On some days, we wouldn't even have a crumb to eat. There's a vivid scene in Nanni Loy's The Four Days of Naples, a movie made after the war about the uprising of the Neapolitans against the occupying Germans, in which one of the young characters sinks his teeth into a loaf of bread so voraciously, so desperately, I can still identify with him. In those four famous days in late September, when Naples rose up against the Germans - even before the Allies arrived, it was the climax of a terrible period of deprivation and marked the beginning of the end of the war in Italy. ~ Sophia Loren

Success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to carry on that counts.
Winston Churchill ~ H.A. Corby

People think being Elvira is a lot of fun - and it is - but I was doing a lot more bizarre stuff before then, just being a dancer and a showgirl and traveling around Italy in a band and working for Playboy Club, and later being a model and meeting a million and one people and being kind of a groupie ... It's all been really interesting. ~ Cassandra Peterson

Pasquale considered his friend's face. It had such an open quality, was such a clearly American face, like Dee's face, like Michael Deane's face. He believed he could spot an American anywhere by that quality - that openness, that stubborn belief in possibility, a quality that, in his estimation, even the youngest Italians lacked. Perhaps it was the difference in age between the countries - America with its expansive youth, building all those drive-in movie theaters and cowboy restaurants; Italians living in endless contraction, in the artifacts of generations, in the bones of empires. This reminded him of Alvis Bender's contention that stories were like nations - Italy a great epic poem, Britain a thick novel, America a brash motion picture in Technicolor - and he remembered, too, Dee Moray saying she'd spent years "waiting for her movie to start," and that she'd almost missed out on her life waiting for it. ~ Jess Walter

In Italy, the concept of the family is very important. ~ Monica Bellucci

Italy doesn't need American football. For what? I've been. Wine, women, song, shopping, unbelievable vistas and landscapes ... Do they need Titans vs. Panthers? Uh, no. ~ Michael Wilbon

The Renaissance of Europe did not take place in the 15th century. Rather it began when Europe learned from the culture of the Arabs. The cradle of European awakening is not Italy. It is the Muslim Spain. ~ Robert Briffault

When I was a young man, King Francois of France greatly admired my bare buttocks. I have that information only by hearsay, of course, because my buttocks were in the king's chateau of Chambord while I was here in Italy. ~ Alan Fisk

Oh, boy... it's hug time." (Italy)
"Would you stop it with your hug-therapy already?!" (Romano)
"I'll never understand Catholics..." (Germany)
Germany, Italy, and Romano ~ Hidekaz Himaruya

Until the arrival of Spanish troops in 1920, Chefchaouen had been visited by just three Westerners. Two were missionary explorers: Charles de Foucauld, a Frenchman who spent just an hour in the town in 1883, disguised as a Jewish rabbi, and William Summers, an American who was poisoned by the townsfolk here in 1892. The third, in 1889, was the British journalist Walter Harris, whose main impulse, as described in his book, Land of an African Sultan, was "the very fact that there existed within thirty hours' ride of Tangier a city in which it was considered an utter impossibility for a Christian to enter". Thankfully, Chefchaouen today is more welcoming towards outsiders, and a number of the Medina's newer guesthouses now include owners hailing from Britain, Italy and the former Christian enemy, Spain. ~ Daniel Jacobs

All Sicilian expression, even the most violent, is really wish fulfillment: our sensuality is a hankering for oblivion, our shooting and knifing a hankering for death; our laziness, our spiced and drugged sherbets, a hankering for voluptuous immobility, that is, for death again; our meditative air is that of a void wanting to scrutinize the enigmas of nirvana. ~ Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa

One cannot analyse the character of European gardens without looking beyond the Mediterranean. This is because horticulture, palace life and city-building developed in the Fertile Crescent before spreading, via Crete, Greece, Egypt and Italy to the forests of Europe ~ Tom Turner

In Italy, I am almost seen as German for my workaholism. Also I am from Milan, the city where people work the hardest. Work, work, work - I am almost German. ~ Silvio Berlusconi

This time it is not a simple, understandable war, within the same culture. This time it is an assault of the animal world upon the house of the human being. I don't know what you saw in Africa and Italy, but I know what I saw in Russia and Poland. We made a cemetery a thousand miles long and a thousand miles wide. Men, women, children, Poles, Russians, Jews, it made no difference. It could not be compared to any human action. It could be compared to a weasel in a henhouse. It was as though we felt that if we left anything alive in the East, it would one day bear witness against us and condemn us. And, now, we have made the final mistake. We are losing the war ~ Irwin Shaw

California is an Italy without its art. ~ Oscar Wilde

Travelling is the ruin of all happiness. There's no looking at a building here after seeing Italy. ~ Fanny Burney

On Easter Monday there was a great display of fireworks from the Castle of St. Angelo. We hired a room in an opposite house, and made our way, to our places, in good time, through a dense mob of people choking up the square in front, and all the avenues leading to it; and so loading the bridge by which the castle is approached, that it seemed ready to sink into the rapid Tiber below. There are statues on this bridge (execrable works), and, among them, great vessels full of burning tow were placed: glaring strangely on the faces of the crowd, and not less strangely on the stone counterfeits above them. The show began with a tremendous discharge of cannon; and then, for twenty minutes or half an hour, the whole castle was one incessant sheet of fire, and labyrinth of blazing wheels of every colour, size, and speed: while rockets streamed into the sky, not by ones or twos, or scores, but hundreds at a time. The concluding burst - the Girandola - was like the blowing up into the air of the whole massive castle, without smoke or dust. In half an hour afterwards, the immense concourse had dispersed; the moon was looking calmly down upon her wrinkled image in the river; and half - a - dozen men and boys with bits of lighted candle in their hands: moving here and there, in search of anything worth having, that might have been dropped in the press: had the whole scene to themselves. ~ Charles Dickens

I'm involved with a baroque opera company here in Italy. I write some of their booklet material, comments on operas. I also write for some baroque opera festivals because this music is my real passion. ~ Donna Leon

Hollywood cools, and when it cools you have to go to where the work is. I ran off to Italy to do spaghetti westerns. ~ Tab Hunter

African American music can't happen in Germany or in Italy or in Mumbai. If America disappeared off the face of the Earth today, the greatest single cultural loss would be blues, jazz, hip-hop, R&B, rock-and-roll. ~ David Simon

Veni, vidi, vici. That was easy for Julius Caesar to say; he crossed Italy in a chariot, not on a stupid bike." - Vivia ~ Leah Marie Brown

For after all, what is there behind, except money? Money for the right kind of education, money for influential friends, money for leisure and peace of mind, money for trips to Italy. Money writes books, money sells them. Give me not righteousness, O lord, give me money, only money. ~ George Orwell

Dan said the other day to the guide, Enough, enough, enough! Say no more! Lump the whole thing! say that the Creator made Italy from designs by Michael Angelo! ~ Mark Twain

We know that poverty is unpleasant; in fact, since it is so remote, we rather enjoy harrowing ourselves with the thought of its unpleasantness. But don't expect us to do anything about it. We are sorry for you lower classes, just as we are sorry for a, cat with the mange, but we will fight like devils against any improvement of your condition. We feel that you are much safer as you are. The present state of affairs suits us, and we are not going to take the risk of setting you free, even by an extra hour a day. So, dear brothers, since evidently you must sweat to pay for our trips to Italy, sweat and be damned to you. ~ George Orwell

There are four cheeses! It's a 'Quattro Formaggi' Pizza!"
"A 'Four-Cheese' Pizza? Well, duh. That's a standard pizza topping, even in Italy. There's nothing special or even unusual about that! So why the big reaction?!"
"Because the four cheeses were blended together and balanced with absolute perfection!
The deliciousness of most cheeses is rooted in their mellow richness and sharp saltiness. With those flavors as his baseline... he took four cheeses and balanced them so that their quirks and strengths play off each other brilliantly! That sharp, salty battle is a stark contrast to the thick sweetness of the shigureni beef- the gap between them creating a full-bodied and indescribably delicious flavor!
Then there's the texture contrast of the gooey cheese and the crisply fragrant crust..."
"And you can't forget the tingly bite of the black pepper sprinkled across the top. What a marvelous accent! All the various flavors blossom to their full potential inside the mouth, each making the salty cheese stand out more and more..."
We came out of the blocks with the bitterness of the artichokes...
then we jumped to the cynarine-boosted sweetness of the shigureni beef...
... and ended with a leap to a salty Quattro Formaggi Blend! ~ Yuto Tsukuda

She had passed her whole life as does everyone, rushing and dreaming in blind, deaf refusal of the miracle of each moment. ~ Umberto Bartolomeo

This is my Italy, she thought. The power and beauty of the antiquities, the detailed frescos, the imposing statuaries carved of milk white granite, Don Martinelli's hammered gold chalice, the glorious tones of the music, the Italy of Puccini and Verdi, Caruso and Toscanini, not the Italy of the shattered spirits in Hoboken and the drunken, desperate Anna Buffa. This was the Italy that fed her soul, where hope was restored and broken hearts were mended in the hands of great artists. ~ Adriana Trigiani

...sin does not deal its consequences evenly upon men and women... ~ Joyce DiPastena

Going to Europe as a budding cook opened my eyes to food in a different way. When I got to Italy, the first thing I did was put my little basil plants in the ground and watch them turn into big, healthy bushes. ~ Frances Mayes

Ahead, a house sits close to the road: a small, single-story place painted mint green. Ivy grows up one corner and onto the roof, the green tendrils swaying like a girl's hair let loose from a braid. In front there's a full and busy vegetable garden, with plants jostling for real estate and bees making a steady, low, collective hum. It reminds me of the aunties' gardens, and my nonna's when I was a kid. Tomato plants twist gently skywards, their lazy stems tied to stakes. Leafy heads of herbs- dark parsley, fine-fuzzed purple sage, bright basil that the caterpillars love to punch holes in. Rows and rows of asparagus. Whoever lives here must work in the garden a lot. It's wild but abundant, and I know it takes a special vigilance to maintain a garden of this size.
The light wind lifts the hair from my neck and brings the smell of tomato stalks. The scent, green and full of promise, brings to mind a childhood memory- playing in Aunty Rosa's yard as Papa speaks with a cousin, someone from Italy. I am imagining families of fairies living in the berry bushes: making their clothes from spiderweb silk, flitting with wings that glimmer pink and green like dragonflies'. ~ Hannah Tunnicliffe

What a waste that we lost Mussolini. He is a first-rate man who would have led our party to power in Italy. [Addressing to a delegation of Italian socialists in Moscow after Mussolini's March on Rome in 1922] ~ Vladimir Lenin

Like many Eastern European gangsters, he had been an official in the state security apparatus until the Communist regime collapsed. ~ Massimo Carlotto

Here we are at last. The Italian proverb says "See Naples and die" but I say, see Naples and live; for there seems a great deal worth living for. ~ Arthur John Strutt

Historically, the pull towards the center in European politics has been incredibly powerful. From Italy to Germany, it has been almost impossible for non-centrist forces to obtain real influence. ~ Jens Nordvig

The savings rate in Italy is high, but the markets do not trust Italy even though it's the third largest economy in the European Union and the eighth in the world. ~ Anibal Cavaco Silva

But no one will weep for me or for them. They have been buried, nameless, beneath five centuries of time.
I am a vampire.
My name is Vittorio, and I write this now in the tallest tower of the ruined mountaintop castle in which I was born, in the northernmost part of Tuscany, that most beautiful of lands in the very center of Italy. ~ Anne Rice

Indeed, when I came to Italy, I expected to encounter a certain amount of resentment, but have received instead empathy from most Italians. In any reference to George Bush, people only nod to Berlusconi, saying","We understand how it is - we have one, too. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

I've always been very interested in political violence. When I finished high school, I did a small dissertation about political violence and fascism in Italy. ~ Loretta Napoleoni

Although Herbert Hoover in many ways prefigured him, it was Franklin D. Roosevelt who first tried to create an explicit corporate state in America with his National Recovery Administration (NRA). With its fascist-style Blue Eagle emblem, the NRA coordinated big business and labor in a central plan, and outlawed competition. The NRA even employed vigilante groups to spy on smaller businesses and report if they violated the plan. Just as in Mussolini's Italy, the beneficiaries of the U.S. corporate state were - in addition to the government itself - established economic interest groups. NRA cheerleaders included the National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Bar Association, the United Mine Workers, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, and - above all - Gerard Swope of General Electric, who helped draft the NRA act. Only ~ Ludwig Von Mises

If countries were people, England and France would be old men. Italy would be dead. Compared with them, America is in its 20s. ~ Will.i.am

To have seen Italy without having seen Sicily is to not have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the clue to everything. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

In Europe, where human relations like clothes are supposed to last, one's got to be wearable. In France one has to be interesting, in Italy pleasant, in England one has to fit. ~ Sybille Bedford

Ambivalence and contradiction energize nearly every figure Michaelangelo carved, from the adolescent Madonna of the Stairs onward...But the four allegories atop the sarcophagi raise them to a symphonic crescendo. Each is a battleground of conflicting emotions and motives, in which will and paralysis battle for supremacy. ~ Eric Scigliano

My grandfather lived to be 96 years old. He was born in a town outside of Salerno in Southern Italy. He came to New York when he was 20. He lived in the States from age 20 to 96, but he brought his culture with him, he brought his food with him, he brought his language with him, he never spoke a word of English. ~ Abel Ferrara