people-from-italy

"I started to control him, I followed him everywhere, day and night. I don't know how I did it, but today my son smiles. I found the son I had lost at eighteen; now he's thirty-six."

"We have lived through very difficult moments, Nicola. We suffered for years, we were unwell, and we rose and were reborn. You must be happy every day of your life, and your happiness must depend especially on yourself."

"I dreamed for years of the moment when you would take your life back... I knew you would make it, and I wasn't wrong. Now the fog that prevented you from seeing things as they truly are has finally cleared. Today we celebrate your rebirth."

"I believe that clarity, the lack of hypocrisy, are important in this journey, as is sharing with others who are facing the drama of addiction."

"The Gods who left thousands of years ago in Milan (Europe) are still in India."

"In Indian diversity there is still the memory of very refined expressions which we have lost."

"Given the subject matter, I cannot be an objective observer and disinterested because I see everything that can benefit the Latin favorably. The Latin also adapts very well to the synthesis required by the new social network, even more than English."

"Simonetti made me love philology as a research method, educating me in rigor, the ability to investigate documents and pay attention to the texts."

"I still don’t know a lot of things and I think that this is the most important part of life."

"There’s a cultural difference, so sometimes we have boring Italian people and you have boring American people, or we have nasty Italians and nasty Americans, or we are super cool men or women in Italy and the same in America. It depends on the individual."

"I like details, but I like details that you should discover, not details that are there to be seen."

"Discover what you really don't know and accept change."

"Generally speaking, I don't like to design something that is there to be seen. I design something which is there to be felt."

"Wherever we live, we are in touch with differences, which give quality to our life. With true differences, we discover what we are and we discover what we need to know about others."

"A dream seems like a dream until you start working on it. And then it can become something infinitely greater. (Italian: Un sogno sembra un sogno fino a quando non si comincia a lavorarci. E allora può diventare qualcosa di infinitamente più grande.)"

"Often, the word utopia is the most convenient way to justify what one has not the will, ability, or courage to do. A dream seems like a dream until one begins to work on it. Only then does it become something infinitely bigger. (Italian: Spesso il termine utopia è la maniera più comoda per liquidare quello che non si ha voglia, capacità o coraggio di fare. Un sogno sembra un sogno fino a quando non si comincia a lavorarci. E allora può diventare qualcosa di infinitamente più grande.)"

"Jews can only engage themselves in the work of street-sweepers and rag-pickers, and cannot produce merchants or things necessary for human use."

"By authority of these present Letters, We order that each and every Jew of both sexes in Our Temporal Dominions, and in all the cities, lands, places and baronies subject to them, shall depart completely out of the confines thereof within the space of three months after the present Letters shall have been made public. They shall be despoiled of all their goods, and be prosecuted according to the due process of law. They shall become bondsmen of the Roman Church, and shall be subjected to perpetual servitude. And the said Church shall claim the same right over them as other dominions over their slaves and bondsmen."

"People can't lick their toes without a tongue."

"He was a man about thirty, taller than the average, but so wonderfully well built that the utmost strength and skill seemed to circulate in his supple and nervy limbs."

"Why this wonderful man is receiving so little honour in England, is due to Carlyle. The most fearlessly truthful historian of his age he, who abominated falsehood under whatever appearance, has stamped with the imprimatur of his honest and famous name, and thus sanctified the most iniquitous of historical injustices ever perpetrated by prejudice and bigotry."

"Seldom did he speak of love, and I remember me of no caresses save a kiss night and morning"

"I quitted the Bastille, about half-past eleven in the evening. The night was dark, the quarter in which I resided but little frequented. What was my surprise, then, to hear myself acclaimed by eight or ten thousand persons. My door was forced open; the courtyard, the staircase, the rooms were crowded with people. I was carried straight to the arms of my wife."

"Oh, you privileged beings to whom heaven has made the rare and fatal gift of an ardent soul and a sensitive heart, you who have experienced the delights of a first love, you alone will understand me, you alone will appreciate what after ten months of torture the first moment of bliss is like!"

"I do not know whether my enemies will reply to me, or adopt the role of silence. Whatever they may do I declare to them that this letter will be my only reply to all their calumnies, past, present or future; and I give my word of honor to the public that whatsoever they may say or do, I shall not write a single line more in my justification. (Postscriptum)"

"A torrent of tears streamed from my eyes, and I was able at last, without dying, to press to my heart..."

"People are unable to understand that this “enchanter and magician” (read “Charlatan”) could ever legitimately produce such an impression as he did on his contemporaries... that reputation which made a believer in him, a brother Mason, say, that (like Prince Bismarck and some Theosophists) “Cagliostro might well be said to be the best abused and most hated man in Europe.”"

"The mention of Cagliostro’s name produces a twofold effect. With the one party, a whole sequence of marvelous events emerges from the shadowy past; with others the modern progeny of a too realistic age, the name of Alexander, Count Cagliostro, provokes wonder, if not contempt."

"Schiller and Goethe were among his great admirers, and remained so to their deaths. Goethe while travelling in Sicily devoted much labour and time to collecting information about “Giuseppe Balsamo” in his supposed native land; and it was from these copious notes that the author of Faust wrote his play “The Great Kophta.”"

"Accordingly, what Century, since the end of the Roman world, which also was a time of skepticism, simulacra and universal decadence, so abounds with Quacks as that Eighteenth? Consider them, with their tumid sentimental vaporing about virtue, benevolence,—the wretched Quack-squadron, Cagliostro at the head of them!"

"I amuse myself, not by making people believe what I wish, but by letting them believe what they wish. These fools of Parisians declare that I am five hundred, and I confirm them in the idea since it pleases them."

"What is singular about Cagliostro, is that in spite of possessing the characteristics that one associates with a charlatan, he never behaved as such all the time he was at Strasburg or at Paris. On the contrary, he never took a sou from a person, lived honourably, always paid with the greatest exactitude what he owed, and was very charitable."

"Asks Bottini, 'Why, if he really possessed the powers he claimed, has he not indeed vanished from his jailors, and thus escaped the degrading punishment altogether?' We have heard of another prisoner, greater in every respect than Cagliostro ever claimed to be. Of that prisoner too, it was said in mocking tones, “He saved others; himself he cannot save . . . let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe..."

"I am not myself when he is by, but his; whatever he wills, I must do; one look fascinates me and subdues me."

"You are right not to meet my glance, my lord, for then I see into your heart too clearly. It is a mirror which retains the image which it has reflected."

"Once for all I beg you to lay aside this pack of puerile beliefs brought from Rome, and all the rubbish of absurd superstitions which you have carted about with you since you ran away from the nunnery. Indeed, a nunnery is much to be deplored."

"The people will rise, and at last royalty will have arrayed against it philosophy, which is intelligence, Parliament, which is the middle class, and the mob, which is the people; in other words, the lever with which Archimedes can raise the world."

"Perchance your prayers will earn your grace, but then you will see nothing of what comes to pass, as you will rest in the arms of the angels. Pray, lady; continue to pray!"

"What are you saying—and you a Christian woman? Is your creed which bids you return good for evil but a hypocrisy, that you pretend to follow it, and you boast of revenge—evil for good?"

"She saw it in the gap which I tore in the veil over the future. That future which has appeared so awful to your royal highness that you have fled into a cloister to wrestle against it at the altar with tears and prayers."

"Is it fault of mine that truth is so awful as to produce such effects? Did I seek out the princess, and beg to be presented to her? No, I was avoiding her, when they almost dragged me before her, and she ordered me to answer her interrogation."

"Alas, is it your fault, or that of the Creator? Why were you made the angel with the infallible gaze, by whose aid I should make the universe submit? Why is it that you are the one to read a soul through its bodily envelope as one may read a book through a glass! Because you are an angel of purity, Lorenza, and nothing throws a shadow upon your soul. In your radiant and immaculate bosom the divine spark may be enshrined, a place without sullying where it may fitly nestle. You are a seer because you are blameless, Lorenza."

"Mark this, my child, that I have tried to have this place fit for a queen, with nothing lacking for your comfort. So calm your folly. Live here as you would do in your convent cell."

"The kinder, more patient and attentive you are, the more of your bars I will remove, so that in some months—who knows how soon?—you will become perhaps more free than I am, in the sense that you will not want to curtail my liberty."

"There is little loss. I let the boiling go on the hundredth of a minute too long. Trifles are enormous in the hermetical art, but anyway, here are two crucibles empty and two ingots cast, and they amount to a hundred weight of fine gold."

"Your highness is forgetting that I see as clearly in your heart what is going on now as I saw your carriage coming from the Carmelite convent, traversing the town and stopping under the trees fifty paces off from my house."

"Now, my enemies think I am crushed. They have said to one another ‘let us trample under foot this man who knows us too well’; but they do not know that in spite of their efforts I shall rise triumphant, when the time of trial is over. They rejoice in the wounds they have inflicted upon me; but these foolish people in their mad transports do not see hovering over them the cloud from which the lightning will dart."

"Finding this quiet appropriation of my property a little too much, I took the liberty to ask for their return; they gravely replied that my diamond and other jewels were confiscated to the profit of Great Britain I returned sadly to my inn... I resigned myself, however, and slept the most profound sleep. I do not know what passed during the night; but the next morning, when I returned to the Custom House, I found the greatest change in manners and faces. The customs authorities spoke to me in the most respectful tone. They made a million excuses and gave me back my jewel box..."

"Oh that the truly terrible example I have just put before their eyes, provoking in their hearts a salutary repentance, might save me the grief of having to lament their fate! Let them recognize their errors! Let them make one simple step toward justice, and my lips will open only to bless them."

"Is it fault of mine, I say, if this future, revealed to you as a holy woman, should be shown to me as a precursor; and if the dauphiness, alarmed at the fate personally threatening her, swooned when it loomed upon her? For her reign is doomed as the most fatal and unfortunate of the entire monarchy."