Authors From Italy

"He ruined the whole referee, he's an idiot, he's an imbecile. Who is the referee? Ceccarini? I don't know, it doesn't matter, he directed like a madman. Such a referee must be suspended."

"I know that my colleagues at Rai will not like to hear me say this, but I really believe that here you will not listen to a political note for eleven minutes on video. We will not have the parties on our necks, even if the parties try to make themselves heard."

"You don't know how to command anymore; those few who wield a timid power, almost apologize for it; They call themselves the first servants of the country, the instruments of the common good. One does not dare to chastise; Criminals are more emotional than victims."

"To notice the faults of others we must have them a little too...."

"We must do to others what we would have them do to us."

"Max Nordau was such a fervent follower of Lombroso, that he extended the theory beyond the master's intentions, to the point of considering most of the artistic geniuses universally admired in our day as the product of degeneration."

"Praise tickles, and carelessness humbles. Is this a pathological symptom, or is it not rather the natural play of the passions, the eternal law of human nature?"

"The utopians want all men to be equally rich or well-off, this equality in wealth or comfort, is the promise with which they entice the workers; For if the workers knew that the result of the agitation would be, as we have seen, universal poverty and mediocrity, they would not listen to them."

"The Country? With a big P? Do you still believe it? My dear, if you say, who it is, where it is, what it does, where it can be found, I will be grateful. The country is you and I, and the usher who stands in the anteroom, and the young lady who copies letters from there. The country is everyone, which means no one. And our ideas are just as good as those of our adversaries."

"Thought is like the Protheus of the fable, which changes its aspect incessantly, or rather, since there is not a single and fixed thought, but an infinite series of thoughts, inconstant, contradictory, no one can with one word define a man exactly; No man can define himself exactly."

"Progress is the synthesis of all human history; Those who have leafed through its immortal books have read this word on every page."

"The nobility and wealth that one acquires by one's own work no one hates them, because everyone hopes for them..."

"The Monarchy made Italy." "Is she alone, alone? And how did he do it? Sponte or pushes? With victories, or by dint of defeats? And what is this Italy of his? Where is the glory, the laurel and the iron that your Leopardi was looking for sixty years ago? Do you know about it? We are the last of the great nations, an inflated frog on the verge of cracking, like the one in the fairy tale. Theoretically, philosophically, you will not tell me that the reign of one man over all his fellows is the ideal. The ideal, if you are an idealist, is quite the opposite, it is the social republic, equality and the agreement of all. Utopia is fine, and even those who support it know it; but a generous utopia, not unpleasant resignation, like ours. Generous and dangerous, you mean? Go there, for the world has not fallen and will not fall, no matter how many reforms and revolutions are made..."

"Wealth, absolute or relative, cannot belong to everyone; it is impossible for those who take part in the game of life to win all, and for the winnings to be equal; The gamblers know this, but before the cards are dealt, before the die is cast, they are all equally animated and comforted by hope, and the loser, if he feels a human sense of spite, nevertheless accepts the necessity of fate, and awaits revenge."

"Today, say the socialists, those who work from morning to night struggle for life, while those who do nothing swim in plenty; Tomorrow those who produce little as well as those who produce much will swim in abundance: injustice for injustice's sake, who will not prefer the latter to the former?"

"Now that [[Italy] is done, Italian kitchens should be unified!" «An arduous undertaking. They will be able to federate; if so!"

"According to Spencer, words are like tokens: the value of these and the meaning of those depend on the general convention."

"If Massimo Taparelli D'Azeglio, after having cried out: Out with the foreigner, was seized with the doubt of whether he was a foreigner, the Prince of Francalanza was exempt from such scruples."

"«Ladies and gentlemen, once upon a time there was a critic who, affirming with extraordinary warmth the superiority of [[Torquato Tasso]'s Gerusalemme liberata over [[Ludovico Ariosto]|Lodovico Ariosto]], engaged in many quarrels with people who did not think as he did, and thus sustained one after the other no less than fourteen fortunate duels; but on the fifteenth, he fell at last with his chest pierced by the enemy's blade. Then the godfathers, who were very afflicted and were waiting to collect his last wishes, heard him come out in this supreme confession: "And to say that I have not yet read either Orlando furioso or Gerusalemme liberata....""

"The intelligence and passion that consume the characters to the point of stripping them of their flesh (the only one that can be concretely represented is the enormous and violent Don Blasco of the Viceroys) are the two poles between which the style also moves. Intellectualism, on the other hand, means that the author and the characters always have a certain understanding for the ideas of others that makes them descend without realizing the slope of transformism, which ends up becoming an indispensable feature of politics and definitively expels its morality, which in its impotence reaffirms the verdict on the world. (Caesar Cases)"

"Realist or psychologist? { {sic|Federigo de}} Roberto, a shrewd investigator of spiritual impulses as well as of aesthetic attitudes, can justly boast of having driven to despair those very numerous colleagues of his who esteem the classification of every writer within the strict limits of a formula as the chief aim of criticism. And easy critics, disposed to be content and take advantage of appearances, might believe that he had deliberately sought to elude such a classification—which, moreover, very often resembles a —by the constant simultaneous multiplicity of manifestations to which he has gradually bent his genius. Realist or psychologist? (Luigi Federzoni)"

"Federico de Roberto, Al rombo del cannone, Treves, C.E.1919."

"Federico de Roberto, Catania, Italian Institute of Graphic Arts, C.E.1907."

"Federico de Roberto, Documenti umani, Fratelli Treves Editori, Milan, C.E.1888."

"Federico de Roberto, Ermanno Raeli, Libreria ed. Galli, Milan, C.E.1889."

"Status social, culture, wealth, even health: the very opposite of all this in Marie-Bernarde Soubirous, known as Bernadette, fourteen years old (but with the development of a ten year old, according to doctors who visited her, and not yet a woman, due to insufficient nutrition); asthmatic; stomach ache; closed in her silence as a shy and introverted person; illiterate and considered by some of her relatives incapable of learning anything; she is also uneducated in religious matters, so much so that she even ignores the mystery of the Trinity; daughter of the most miserable family in the city; resident in the cell of the municipal prison, cleared by the authorities because she was considered unhealthy for the inmates themselves; with the father not only bankrupt and with the reputation - albeit abusive - of a slacker and a drunkard, but also with a stay in prison behind him on suspicion of theft: released after nine days, he dropped the accusation, it was so inconsistent, but without proceeding to any judgment, so as to leave him with a defamatory suspicion. Let us realize: in all this, only the eyes of faith can see a mysterious conformity to the Gospel and, therefore, the stigmata of truth. Only adhering to an inverted perspective compared to the "eyes of the flesh" can make us hear the echoes of the Magnificat intoned by She of whom Bernadette Soubirous was a witness: «... she looked at the humility of her servant [ ...]; she has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; she has overthrown the mighty from their thrones, she has exalted the humble; she has filled the hungry with good things; she sent the rich away empty-handed ... »( Luke 1, 48 and 51 ff.) (p. 92)"

"Matteo Strukul, Mila Zago. Black queen. Mila's justice, E/O Editions, C.E.2013. ISBN 978-8866323129"

"Matteo Strukul, Mila Zago. Mila's ballad, E/O Editions, 2011. ISBN 978-8866320166"

"We felt invincible. But we weren't. We felt innocent. But we weren't. We felt sincere. But we weren't. We felt invincible... (Giorgio Fanton)"

"Nothing could be more wrong, false and far from the truth, because man is in all respects one of the greatest mysteries that nature has conceived in its own design. (Alexander Weisz)"

"Vlad was for his people what Che Guevara would have been for the Cubans a few centuries later: a liberator, a defender, a leader ready to do anything to fight for his land and, let's add, the Christian religion. An icon, therefore."

"Vlad III of Wallachia was the only Christian prince, albeit Orthodox, to respond and join the crusade called by Pope Pius II, born Enea Silvio Piccolomini, who desperately asked to organize a Christian defense against the excessive Ottoman power of Muhammad II, the Conqueror. In fact, having summoned the Christian princes of Europe to Mantua with the bull Vocavit nos of C.E.1459, the pontiff soon had to face a dramatic series of refusals from Florence, Venice, Milan and then from the kingdoms of France, England and Spain. Even the king of Hungary hesitated, waiting. Only Dracula, therefore, had the courage to face an enemy who, in numbers, was at least twenty times superior to him. And he did it in complete solitude."

"Vittorio Messori, Inquiry into Christianity, Oscar Mondadori, Milan, C.E.2003. ISBN 88-04-52048-5"

"The Christian Karol Wojtyla is convinced that the man has lost the keys that allow him to open the drawer inside which is the man's instruction booklet. For him, brothers in humanity are certainly not "bad": they are simply lost, confused, lost, plagiarized by bad teachers, by deceptive suggestions. (IX)"

"La passion de convaincre, the passion to convince: this, for Blaise Pascal, the distinctive sign of every Christian who is truly convinced that he has found it in the Gospel – or rather in the personal encounter with Christ – the truth about man and humanity. That passion seems to entirely pervade the pope "who came from afar". (IX)"

"This book , in fact, is an effective sum of the perspective of life and thought of a man who moves as a protagonist on the scene of the history of everyone, not just his faithful. (p. VII)"

"«How many divisions does the pope have?». Stalin's question found, more than forty years later, a first answer in Warsaw, then in Budapest, then in Moscow itself from where, as we write, Gorbachev respectfully asks [ [Pope John Paul II|John Paul]] to be able to meet him to see if and how he may help him to bring the USSR and its satellites out of a history that is not only no longer practicable but now intolerable. (p. VII)"

"Turin wasn’t a small copy of Paris also because, unlike Paris, it was not a city of riots or barricades. It’s a city that produces eccentrics, loners, geniuses and sometimes brilliant types, outsiders, isolated writers and painters, some anarchists but theorists, rarely bombers, causes murders and suicides (for the latter, one of the highest, if not the highest , Italian percentage, in sad competition with Trieste, the city on the opposite border), but the mass is of calm people, of subjects, often grumpy and hypercritical but, in the end, obedient. In its history it never chased away its dukes and then kings, it never plotted against them. Unlike Paris, which was periodically on the barricades, Turin rose up only twice. And both not for vague ideological objectives, but for the concreteness of bread: in C.E.1864 when, treacherously, the transfer of the capital arrived; and in C.E.1917, when the State asked to fast with war rations and at the same time to work at an accelerated pace in the factories producing for the front. There was also movement in the last days of April 1945. But, here too, for a very concrete issue: above all to prevent the destruction of industrial plants, on whose work future life would depend. Once again, the awareness, dictated by common sense, that the interests of entrepreneurs coincided with those of employees prevailed over the myth of the "class struggle". Without factories, no profits for the boss; but not even bread for the workers. (chapter III)"

"But, since he was mentioned as the inevitable Duce: the people of Turin called him, as you know, Cerüti. With the Piedmontese «u». As a proletarian from Romagna, with consequent inferiority complexes, he probably was in awe of Turin, he seemed to fear its elegant snobbery: it was still the city of the aristocracy, it was the capital of fashion, with its related institution (which the Regime itself, moreover, had founded) [....] –, Benito defined Turin as «half French» (chap. III)"

"If in C.E.1953 [23 May] the violence of the sky knocked down the star [Emblem placed on the top of the spire of the Mole Antonelliana], in C.E.1904 lightning had knocked down, at its peak, the Angel of Light , who had the regulatory five-pointed Masonic star on his head. The same one that had been affixed to the lapels of the army uniforms, the New Religious Order for the New Italy, with the king in place of the Pope, the generals in place of the bishops, the officer class as the new clergy, the troops as the people penitent of God, devoted to obedience, poverty, discipline, honor, silence and, finally, to the sacrifice of his life. And all in the name of the new faith, that of the Motherland. Nothing surprising, everyone knows that you only fight one religion to build another. (I understood)"

"Who may you confide in, who may you turn to to alleviate the anguish and loneliness a little? [...] Will you then turn to the politician, the trade unionist, the sociologist? But all these gentlemen have to sell theories and strategies only for the strong, the healthy, the young. The old man and his prospect of death are doubly taboo because they undermine both their power and their depth: what will become of their authority and their words when they themselves are nothing but exes?Think of one of the new, truly powerful people of Western societies: the union boss, at least in certain contemporary Italian versions; not, it’s clear, in the courageous and beneficial ones of past eras, or even today in many countries, perhaps in those where - according to the theories - trade unionists would no longer be necessary because the workers themselves would already have the power... Someone, here, it’ll risk scandal more than ever: unions and trade unionists - a revered dogma dictates - cannot be spoken of except well, or rather very well. Here we should always speak in terms of noble, disinterested champions of the ideal, of knights without blemish and without fear of Humanity. But I laugh at those who break the statuettes of old saints to build new ones. I refuse to consider categories or people not on a case-by-case basis, based on objectivity but on the basis of prejudices, whether favorable or unfavorable. I do not recognize any human institution as sacred: if I want the "Sacred" I know where to look for it; I prefer the original, not the imitations. (Chapter II, Years to life and not life to years)"

"Mariology is closely linked to Christology: abandoning or even just downsizing the former means calling into question the latter as well. (p. 322)"

"Verlaine, the maudit poet, but with a strong religious torment that ended up prevailing, speaking of the love for Mary: «all other loves are orders». With similar words, he wanted to underline that "free" character of Marian devotion that the Church has always safeguarded. Over 20 centuries, only a few dogmas have been proclaimed about her di lei: which among other things, we know, are at the service and shelter of her di lei Son di lei, well before her di lei. Only to these defined truths does the Catholic owe homage. Everything else, regarding Mary, is left to the free sensitivity and initiative of the believer. (p. 274)"

"Mary is «figure», «image» of the Church. Both have motherhood as their primary vocation. Thus, looking at her, this Church is protected from a "male chauvinist" model, which sees her as an instrument to pursue a socio-political action program. In Mary, her figure and icon, the Church rediscovers the face of her mother, it does not degenerate into an involution that transforms it into a sort of party, into an organization, into a pressure group serving interests humans. To repeat, here, the words of Ratzinger: «If Mary no longer finds a place in certain theologies and ecclesiologies of today, the reason is simple and dramatic: they have reduced faith to an abstraction. And an abstraction doesn't know what to do with a mother." (pp. 237-238)"

"The Marian dogmas are, as we know, four in all: perpetual virginity and divine motherhood; then, after almost fifteen centuries of debate and exploration of the mystery, here is the conception without the stain of original sin and the assumption into heaven. Well, these truths have been codified and solemnly protected as dogmas, that is, as basic and indisputable truths of the faith, not so much out of devotion to Mary, but as a defense of faith in Jesus. In fact, if we reflect on their content , we realize that they reaffirm the authentic faith in Christ as true God and true man: two natures in one Person. They then reiterate the fundamental eschatological expectation, indicating in Mary the immortal destiny that awaits us all. And, finally, they secure the faith, now threatened, in a creator God (it is one of the meanings of the more misunderstood truth about Mary's perpetual virginity), a God who can freely intervene even on matter. (p. 236)"

"Judaism – as has been said, albeit in a somewhat simplified way – is the religion of hope; the Christianity of charity; the islamism of faith. (p. 191)"

"Fatima, in fact, is the name of Muhammad's favorite daughter [...] All of Islàm, beyond every school, has not forgotten a 'hadit' ' of Muhammad, a saying, that is, handed down by the oral tradition of the first disciples and considered a source of revelation alongside the Koran. That hadit preserved a word of the prophet of Islam addressed to Fatima: «You will be the mistress of women in Paradise, after Màryam». A superiority, therefore, in the Muslim sky itself, of what Christians call Regina Coeli. And, at the same time, a direct link with Fatima. The two exercise together (even if Mary is at the top) a sort of lordship in Paradise. It is not surprising, therefore, that Louis Massignon [...] saw not a random coincidence, but rather an eloquent sign in the fact that Mary, "Mistress of women" in the Muslim Paradise, chose to appear in a location hitherto unknown to many of the same Portuguese, but who bore the proper name of one who, for Muhammad, is immediately below her in the kingdom of the blessed. [...] so that Islamic pilgrims, even if unorganized, have never been lacking in Fatima and are now always growing. [...] It is singular that, in so much talk of ecumenism, Mary is the "place" where Muslims and Christians (those, at least, Catholic and Orthodox) are closer than anywhere else. (pp. 187-191)"

"In May C.E.1949, the Council of Europe was established in Strasbourg, a body then devoid of effective political powers and charged only with «laying the foundations for the construction of a European federation». Thus in the act of its foundation. The following year - therefore, in C.E.1950 - that Council announced a competition of ideas, open to all artists, for a flag of the future united Europe. A then young Alsatian designer, Arsène Heitz, participated with a sketch, where twelve white stars stood out in a circle on a blue background. As he later revealed, the idea was not accidental: devoted to the Madonna, he recited the rosary every day. Just when he heard about the European competition and decided to participate, he was reading the story of Saint Catherine Labouré and – stimulated by that reading – he had decided to procure, for himself and his wife, a «Miraculous Medal», which he had not known about until then. The stars, therefore, of his plan came from there: and, there, they came directly from the Apocalypse and from the "Woman clothed with the sun" with the crown around her head. As for blue, it was the traditional color of the Virgin. Among the 101 sketches that arrived from all over the world, "inexplicably", as Heitz himself said (who had participated in the competition without too much hope, almost only to respond to an impulse given to him by the discovery of the Medal), the Council of Europe chose his. It should be noted, among other things, that the head of the commission that made the choice was a Jew, Paul M.G.Lévy, director of the Council's Press and Information Service. Therefore, no confessional motivations were at work [...] Furthermore, to confirm the singularity of the choice, Heitz's proposal was opposed by the fact that, if there were 12 stars on the proposed flag, not as many were then the States of the Council. In fact, in the face of criticism, the designer had to reply that the twelve represented a "symbol of fullness" (and this is, in fact, also in the Old Testament: twelve, among other things, the sons of Jacob , like the 12 tribes of Israel; and therefore twelve is the number wanted by Jesus for his apostles, meaning that the Church is the "new chosen people"). Having adopted this symbolic perspective, the community authorities, when Europe's member states ended up exceeding a dozen, officially established that the number of stars on the flag was to be considered immutable. (pp. 107-108)"

"Matteo Strukul, Mila Zago. Man cub. Mila's promise, E/O Editions, C.E.2015. ISBN 978-8866326090"

"The Christian God proposes and does not impose, always leaving a margin of darkness that allows denial and that saves man's freedom; and, for Him, the right to forgive. (p. 91)"