Translators From Italy

"Peace is the most desirable of all human conditions. It is a promise of Paradise. When all human worries and griefs will be over, we will participate in the fullness of being with no unrest, anxiety, or disturbance. For believers, this is our ultimate goal. It is also part of our nature. Peace is our fate because peace is our origin. Our human nature is made out of peace, and peace is what we are made for. All troubles are in fact caused by the disruption of our original condition, which is both our origin and our destiny. Peace is then quite a serious thing—something that may be cast in doubt today, if we consider how this precious word is too often misused. Peace is the opposite of war, in a broader sense, but it is not just the absence of war. ...Only deeply peaceful men and women can build a truly pacific society, one that would be able to resist and last."

"The same truth we trust to finally prevail is the same truth [Freedom of Religion or Belief] is made of. Religions and spiritual ways are not all the same. What is the same is the honest spirit that animates all believers in different religions. What is really true of all religions, including religions that a believer in another religion may regard as false, is the afflatus for truth that motivates them. No matter how different beliefs and believers may be, no matter how many conflicts they may have between each other, that single element, a thirst and hunger for truth, makes them similar, make their devotees sisters and brothers, make them human and unique."

"Is there a risk that reducing the debate on religious liberty to different forms of state recognition, including the Italian “,” may implicitly or inadvertently confer to the state the power to grant to religious groups the right to exist? In practice, states do have such power in different countries. The question is whether giving such an authority to the state is morally and philosophically correct. Perhaps, a state should just watch over the compliance of its citizens with the laws (assuming the laws are just), regardless of their religious persuasion, and leave religious groups alone to live and self-regulate their lives. The state is not the source of religious liberty, although it should acknowledge and protect it."

"Let’s interpret [Argentinian American economist Alejandro A.] Chafuen’s remarks in its deepest and broader sense: social justice has little or nothing to do with interference by abusive powers, be it from a government, a rogue bureaucrat, an ideological faction, or an organized group. As [Father Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio] made clear, Chafuen argued, the “justice” implied in “social justice” is not only what the law establishes. It does include the strict, and even technical, legal aspects of the law, but it is chiefly a matter of social concord. It is philosophical before being legal; it is spiritual in nature."

"When the object of sense is very violent, it injures sense at once, so that sense, after its occurrence, cannot immediately discern its weaker objects. Thus extreme brightness offends the eye, and a very loud noise offends the ears. Mind, however, is otherwise; by its most excellent object it is neither injured nor ever confused. Nay, rather, after this object is known, it distinguishes inferior things at once more clearly and more truly."

"If someone asks us which of these is more perfect, intellect or sense, the intelligible or the sensible, we shall promise to answer promptly, if he will first give us an answer to the following question. You know, my inquiring friend, that there is some power in you which has a notion of each of these things—a notion, I say, of intellect itself and of sense, of the intelligible and the sensible. This is evident, for the same power which compares these to each other must at that time in a certain manner see both. Tell me, then, whether a power of this kind belongs to intellect or sense? ... Sense, as you yourself have shown, can perceive neither itself nor intellect and the objects of intellect; whereas intellect knows both. ... Therefore, intellect is not only more perfect than sense but is also, after perfection itself, in the highest degree perfect."

"The rational soul in a certain manner possesses the excellence of infinity and eternity. If this were not the case, it would never characteristically incline toward the infinite. Undoubtedly this is the reason that there are none among men who live contentedly on earth and are satisfied with merely temporal possessions."

"The inquiry of the intellect never ceases until it finds that cause of which nothing is the cause but which is itself the cause of causes. This cause is none other than the boundless God. Similarly, the desire of the will is not satisfied by any good, as long as we believe that there is yet another beyond it. Therefore, the will is satisfied only by that one good beyond which there is no further good. What can this good be except the boundless God?"

"The intellect is prompted by nature to comprehend the whole breadth of being. ... Under the concept of truth it knows all, and under the concept of the good it desires all."

"The people who have discovered something important in any of the more noble arts have principally done so when they have abandoned the body and taken refuge in the citadel of the soul."

"To understand , Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Politian are just as valuable as and Sismondi."

"Non exprimis, aliquis inquit, Ciceronem. Quid tum? Non enim sum Cicero; me tamen, ut opinor, exprimo."

"No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide."

"When one has made a mistake, one says. "Another time I shall know what to do," when one should say is: "I already know what I shall really do another time.""

"Since God could have created a freedom in which there could be no evil (i.e., a state when men were happy and free and certain not to sin), it follows that He wished evil to exist. But evil offends Him. A commonplace case of masochism."

"The only reason why we are always thinking of our own ego is that we have to live with it more continuously than with anyone else's."

"Death is repose, but the thought of death disturbs all repose."

"All our "most sacred affections" are merely prosaic habit."

"We care so little of other people than even Christianity urges us to do good for the love of God."

"Men who have a tempestuous inner life and do not seek to give vent to it by talking or writing are simply men who have no tempestuous inner life. Give company to a lonely man and he will talk more than anyone."

"All sins have their origin in a sense of inferiority, otherwise called ambition."

"The man of action is not the headstrong fool who rushes into danger with no thought for himself, but the man who puts into practice the things he knows."

"You cannot insult a man more atrociously than by refusing to believe he is suffering."

"It is stupid to grieve for the loss of a girl friend: you might never have met her, so you can do without her."

"It is not the actual enjoyment of pleasure that we desire. What we want is to test the futility of that pleasure, so as to be no longer obsessed by it."

"Human imagination is immensely poorer than reality."

"Misfortunes cannot suffice to make a fool into an intelligent man."

"I spent the whole evening sitting before a mirror to keep myself company."

"What we desire is not to possess a woman, but to be the only one to possess her."

"When we read, we are not looking for new ideas, but to see our own thoughts given the seal of confirmation on the printed page. The words that strike us are those that awake an echo in a zone we have already made our own—the place where we live—and the vibration enables us to find fresh starting points within ourselves."

"Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long."

"The most banal thing, discovered in ourselves, becomes intensely interesting. It is no longer an abstract banality, but an amazing co-ordination between reality and our own individuality."

"No matter how much a young man likes to think for himself, he is always trying to model himself on some abstract pattern largely derived from the example of the world around him. And a man, no matter how conservative, shows his own worth by his personal deviation from that pattern."

"The whole problem of life, then, is this: how to break out of one's own loneliness, how to communicate with others."

"War makes men barbarous because, to take part in it, one must harden oneself against all regret, all appreciation of delicacy and sensitive values. One must live as if those values did not exist, and when the war is over one has lost the resilience to return to those values."

"We want Realism's wealth of experience and Symbolism's depth of feeling. All art is a problem of balance between two opposites."

"Love is the cheapest of religions."

"Things which cost nothing are those which cost the most. Why? Because they cost us the effort of understanding that they are free."

"In general, the man who is readily disposed to sacrifice himself is one who does not know how else to give meaning to his life. The profession of enthusiasm is the most sickening of all insincerities."

"If it were possible to have a life absolutely free from every feeling of sin, what a terrifying vacuum it would be!"

"Generations do not age. Every youth of any period, any civilization, has the same possibilities as always."

"A dream is a creation of the intelligence, the creator being present but not knowing how it will end."

"Anchorites used to ill-treat themselves in the way they did, so that the common people would not begrudge them the beatitude they would enjoy in heaven."

"We do not remember days, we remember moments."

"We must never say, even in fun, that we are disheartened, because someone might take us at our word."

"Life is not a search for experience, but for ourselves. Having discovered our own fundamental level we realize that it conforms to our own destiny and we find peace."

"A man succeeds in completing a work only when his qualities transcend that work."

"The really clever thing, in affairs of this sort, is not to win a woman already desired by everyone, but to discover such a prize while she is still unknown."

"There is an art in taking the whiplash of suffering full in the face, an art you must learn. Let each single attack exhaust itself; pain always makes single attacks, so that its bite may be more intense, more concentrated. And you, while its fangs are implanted and injecting their venom at one spot, do not forget to offer it another place where it can bite you, and so relieve the pain of the first."

"Love has the faculty of making two lovers seem naked, not in each other's sight, but in their own."