All Quotes

"Great mutations must be undertaken with great counsel and proceed slowly in order to proceed safely: otherwise, instead of one good from a wise man, two evils from a fool are encountered, which are to decide without judgement and to repent without remedy."

"There are a hundred thorns for every rose."

"(About the Great Wall of China) All walled with square stones, strong enough to withstand any torment of air and water; and, whether true or plausible, it is nevertheless rumoured among the Chinese that King Cin ordered the execution of the master builders of the work if, where one stone meets and fits together with another, the joints were so loose that a nail could be driven into them: which, even if it is nothing more than an expression of exaggeration, would still have no reason to be feigned, if the squaring and fitting of the marble were not exquisitely executed."

"The two boundless oceans, which descend from opposite sides of Africa and meet at this Cape of Good Hope, collide with each other with such furious force, as you can see here. Alps, I would say, and [Apennines] of waves, driven to break against each other: with which the storm is so strangely disrupted that there is no rule of art for turning the rudder that is sufficient to receive it with a slanted side and dampen the impetus of the furious beating of the waves. Here, then, the sea is as deep as an abyss, and full of terrible monsters, heralds of the approaching storm, when they raise their heads and gasp, and throw a river of water into the air with their great trumpets: sometimes so many together, as I have witnessed, that as far as the eye can see to the last edge of the horizon, everything appears crowded with such hideous creatures. On land, everything is rocks, mountains and cliffs of inaccessible height, cut vertically into the sea, so that the breaking of the waves against their sides causes a formidable crash that terrifies and deafens us. Along them runs a violent south-westerly current, which, when it meets the sea pushed against it and the opposing wind, either rebounds or overcomes them, doubling the fury of the storm and causing the waves to boil and swirl in such violent and rapid circles that each of them, when it pulls down any large ship, is a Charybdis. Finally, this endless ocean, which stretches from here to who knows how far beyond the Antarctic, is an open field for the winds to battle, which, being unbroken and unobstructed, are all the more capable of turning the sea upside down, as they have no obstacle to break their course and their forces. (Part I, Chapter XII, “Capo di Buona Speranza”; 1664, pp. 176-177)"

"I would not want you to falsely imagine that seeing the Antipodes, where I am now taking you, would cost us a journey of at least eleven thousand miles, which is the distance from here to the opposite side of the world. This is quite the opposite of the truth; indeed, the way to never reach them is to go there, and the reason for this is very clear: because there are no Antipodes, except [opposite] feet against feet; nor can they be [opposed] except on the points of the earth's diameter: therefore we must be half a world away. (Part I, Chapter XIX, “'The Antipodes”'; 1664, p. 295)"

"[...] with the finest artistry, not only concealed or hidden, but lost within it, that body (of the Colossus of Rhodes) appeared, like the men of Deucalion from stones, born of himself by divine teaching. And to say nothing of the well-understood proportion of his limbs, all corresponding to the most perfect natural form; and of the softness and sensitivity, without one discordant with the other; and of the lively and spirited attitude with which he posed and stood upright; his face was tempered with such a beautiful and, above all, difficult mixture of air that it was impossible to distinguish which was more dominant in him: the lovable, rightly desired in an effigy of the Sun, or the majestic, equally due to the face of a God. (Part I, Chapter XX, “Rhodes”; 1664, p. 308)"

"[...] this incomparable King of the Mountains, Atlas towering above us. Behold how he rises up, how he rears himself, and how his proud head [raises] and turns towards the ever-feared and ever-hostile Europe, in an act of recognition and spying: and how he spreads his immense back towards that jealous frontier of his Africa, in the act of securing and defending it with his shoulders. However much we see of him, he is neither the whole of Atlas, nor more than that; but only the summit. (from “'L'Atlante,”' p. 79)"

"Regarding the sun Saint Anastasius of Sinai, he held a strange opinion that it was created by God here on earth, then lifted it up and transported it to the fourth heaven, where the virtue that lay low below could spread for the benefit of a few, spread for the benefit of all, and there was like the heart of nature, from whose vital heat it is animated and from whose spirits it has the vigour to move and operate. (Book II, Chapter VII; 1839, p. 240)"

"Bartoli represents the typical mentality of the seventeenth-century man of letters: marvellous mastery of form, absolute lack or deficiency of thought. One would not really say that he came into the world a generation after Galileo and Sarpi."

"Yes, Jesus Christ could have freed himself from the hands of the Jews and Pontius Pilate, but knowing that it was the will of his Eternal Father that he suffer and die for our salvation, he submitted himself voluntarily, indeed he went himself to meet his enemies, and allowed himself to be taken and led to his death."

"And on the sixth day God created Manchester"

"Here no sail is lowered, here no hand is removed from the oar, here no anchor is yet thrown to drop. Terra Incognita} Just to name it is to understand how much there is to know about it. Here are the shores of this sea, visible to the eye but not yet to the foot of anyone who knows it. If you are not satisfied with just seeing it, and you wish to venture forth to inquire about it, turn towards it and cry out: O you over there, what world is yours? What region? What country? Is it an island in the sea or mainland? Is it cultivated or uncultivated? Is it deserted, solitary, uninhabited or inhabited? And by what multitude of men? And of what language, customs, religion and God? Are there kings, magistrates, people; are there assemblies and cities, or do they live in uncertainty, like the Scythians, wandering and roaming? No one shows up to answer: so the answer is a profound silence, which is nevertheless the true answer to those who have good ears, because only by remaining silent can one say what it is, that is, Terra Incognita. Now, let us believe that this concealment of such a large part of the world is done for the sake of Nature's reputation; otherwise, as the Stoic said about philosophising about this great universe, “Pusilla res mundus est, nisi in illo quod quærat omnis mundus habeat” : thus, once the Earth has been completely discovered, it would cease to appear to us as a world, and we would begin to consider it as nothing much ,so much remains unknown in the North, so much in the South, so much in its parts far from the sea, and so many islands, small worlds in themselves, scattered and lost in the immensity of the ocean, as in the infinite spaces of the void, the worlds seen in their philosophical dreams by Democritus and Epicurus. Thus, one might say that the Earth is so great that for as many centuries as time has recorded in its annals, people have laboured to discover its parts, and yet God knows how many centuries remain for others to discover. (from “'Terra incognita”', pp. 330-331)"

"Here we lack only one [sign] to prove that we are on the barren shore of the much-sung and feared Lake Averno: what others, historians and poets, have written about it is confirmed here by the truth, and our eyes give us full faith in it. Here is the continuous circle of mountains, in whose deepest centre the lake lies, and remains so completely hidden that whether it is winter or summer, dawn or dusk, or the sun rises at midday, it can never be seen, even with a reflection of light, or be seen by it: therefore this unhappy water, in the melancholy brown that it always shows, seems to have the darkness of hell mixed in it to blacken it even more. Behold the thick forests that gather around it, and again blind it, doubling its shadows. Enclosed on all sides, it has nowhere to lead even a thin thread of water out, and move as if alive; but everything stagnates between its banks, everything within itself becomes swampy, and like a corpse of water, it stinks. Of the Cimmerians who have their dwellings nearby, I can only point with my finger and tell you that they live there in their underground caves: whether they are alive or dead, no one knows for sure, because their home is also their tomb. On this other side, it will be easy for you to recognise in that great cleft in the mountain the dark and frightening mouth, or rather chasm, into which anyone who has the courage to enter the bowels of the earth must throw himself, and descend alive, if he can, to the Elysian Fields, or else, and more likely, to Hell. All that is missing is to see some unwary flock of birds flying through the air that hangs over and broods over the lake, entering it and attracting the pestilential vapour that exhales from it, poisoning themselves and falling down, I know not whether stunned or dead. But to linger so long on this unhappy shore, with the stench of sulphur biting our brains and strangling us, would be to pay too high a price for our curiosity. (from “Il lago Averno”, p. 343)"

"There is only one path to the true: straight as a ray of light. Infinite and contrary are those that lead away from it to falsehood. (Book I, Chapter IV; 1659, p. 55)"

"The root, which fears so much that the sky will not see it, the sun will not touch it, the air will not harm it, well aware of what its ministry is, burrows deep underground, and in its tender birth, it pierces, penetrates, branches out, and spreads: and throws out so many trunks, branches, and roots everywhere that it looks like an upside-down, buried tree: and therefore it lives because it is buried, otherwise, if you dig it up, it dies. There it is the first foundation of the [fabrica] it supports, and well suited to it, that is, for the high, deep, for the wide, spread out, for the shocks from the whirlwinds, divided and firm on every side from which the wind blows: like the masts of ships, which are held by the rigging, which, like arms, grasp it from all sides and hold it steady. In addition to this, the root is all together what [in] animals is the mouth, the belly, and the liver. It sucks in food, cooks it, transmutes it into juice, indifferent to receiving the different forms of the different parts that derive from it. (Book I, Chapter VII; 1659, p. 97)"

"Hear: the day might seem too honoured with the works of the hand, of which the night is deprived, if the works of the mind were not given in exchange for those. The day therefore has its labours, the night its thoughts; and appropriate to each, the former has noise, the latter silence. (Book I, Chapter X; 1839, p. 97)"

"But before I bring you the snails, I must do as that wise painter Theon recounted by Aelianus, who did not reveal the image of a soldier in arms exposed to a large crowd eager to see it until a full choir of musicians had played a sonata in a martial style, as if challenging two armies to battle. When he saw that the spectators had conceived a certain martial spirit, he drew back the curtain from the painting and revealed the soldier in such a fierce act of charging the enemy that, as the historian describes him, he seemed to have lightning in his eyes and thunder in his right hand, so terrible was his gaze and formidable his sword, running in a manner and with a bearing befitting one carried away by the impetus of fury. Such was Theone's soldier, for which reason he first disposed the minds of the onlookers with that sonata inviting them to a true spectacle of battle. (Book I, Chapter XI; 1839, p. 101)"

"And has God not shown himself to be supremely admirable in varying in a hundred and more different ways the circling and coiling of a snail within itself? Could anything be more equal, more determined, more simple? And yet, in his hands, it has become capable of such great art. Some turn with volutes, one inside the other, as if they were twisting around a spindle: and as they proceed lengthwise, they become thinner and gradually taper to a point. Others, on the contrary, all return to themselves: and tell me, Archimedes, who wrote so ingeniously about them, who teaches them to draw a line so perfectly that it is not out of proportion in any way? Tell me, architects, who struggle so much to draw volutes with a ruler, and yet never anything but false ones, while, not knowing any better, they compose them from some part of a circle, and they are not circles, even though they are circular: who has instilled the rule in snails? Born masters of an art, of which they are not yet good disciples. (Book I, Chapter XI; 1659, pp. 173-174)"

"[...] working on Grotesque [...] everything is, one might say, a mosaic of disproportionate elements put together, all the more beautiful because the parts are taken from further afield and come together in more foolish forms. The neck of a crane sprouting from the stem of a flower, ending in a [scimia] head, with four snail horns that shoot fire: a peacock's tail blooming on an old man's chin as a beard, and a thick mop of coral hair; another has vine arms, twisted legs, and two little lights shining in the shell of a conch; a nose like a flute, ears like a pair of bat wings, and when he looks at himself in a net, he sees the image of a mammoth behind him: and such fantastical oddities, as painters are wont to imagine. But even in this, he needs wisdom, for just as not every tree can be grafted onto every other tree, so not every part can be well joined to every other part in the grotesque, and it must be whimsy, not nonsense, nor should the wisdom of [judgement] in arranging it be less prominent than the madness of ingenuity in inventing it. (Book I, Chapter XVI; 1659, pp. 284-285)"

"And since we want to know everything, let him take them out and show us his hands and measure them, if by chance they were like those of King Ahasuerus of Persia, that is, of Ahasuerus, husband of Esther, nicknamed Longimanus, because one hand was longer than the other; and understand why he gives sparingly to some, and only when necessary, either the help of grace or the goods we call fortune, while to others he gives abundantly, exceeding and overflowing. (Book II, Chapter III; 1839, pp. 201-202)"

"This is Manchester, we do things differently here."

"The Marino of prose was Daniello Bartoli, a highly skilful and unsurpassed craftsman of periods and phrases, with a style that was both refined and ornate. He travelled to almost every corner of the earth and produced thousands of descriptions and narratives: one never sees that the prohibition of so many new things has refreshed his impressions. A rhetorician and abstract moralist, his head full of mythology and sacred scripture, copious in words and phrases in all fields of knowledge, a brilliant colourist, he believed he could say everything, because he knew how to say everything well. Nature and man were nothing more than stimuli and opportunities for him to draw out all his erudition and vocabulary. He has no other, more serious purpose. Unfamiliar with the European cultural movement and all the struggles of thought, stuck in a second-hand classicism and Catholicism that came to him from school and was not explored by his intelligence, his brain remains as idle as his heart, and his attention is entirely focused on the technical and mechanical aspects of expression. He treats the Italian language, like Greek or Latin, as a dead language, already fixed, and fully possessed by him."

"Those who wish to convince themselves of the immense variety of styles and almost different languages contained within the Italian language should consider the works of Daniello Bartoli."

"Il p. Dan. Bartoli è il Dante della prosa italiana. Il suo stile in ciò che spetta alla lingua è tutto a risalti e rilievi."

"Uomo che fra tutti del suo tempo, e fors'anche di tutti i tempi, fu quello che e per teoria e scienza e per pratica, meglio e piú profondamente e pienamente conobbe la nostra lingua."

"Daniello Bartoli, Dell'uomo di lettere difeso e emendato, Giacinto Marietti, Torino, 1834."

"Daniello Bartoli, Della Geografia trasportata al Morale, Egidio Ghezzi, Roma, 1664."

"Daniello Bartoli, La geografia trasportata al morale, dalla tipografia di Giacinto Marietti, Torino, 1839."

"Daniello Bartoli, La ricreatione del savio, Ignatio de' Lazzeri, Roma, 1659."

"Daniello Bartoli, La ricreazione del savio, Borel e Bompard, Napoli, 1839."

"Daniello Bartoli, L'uomo al punto, 2 voll., a cura di Adolfo Faggi, UTET, Torino, 1930."

"My husband is already suffering because of the fate that befell him. We are asking for no special treatment from the government; we are just pleading for some humanity, for some respects for the human right to seek the best treatment to cure his ailment."

"My biggest realization when I gave birth to Coco [Corinth's nickname] was how great God’s love is for humanity. Now that I had my own son, imagining what it would feel like to sacrifice him for everyone else’s sins—this concept and ultimately love—suddenly became so real to me."

"Manchester is in the south of the north of England. Its spirit has a contrariness in it – a south and north bound up together – at once untamed and unmetropolitan; at the same time, connected and wordly."

"From somewhere in Western Asia people of a fighting race began to move southward and eastward about 1900 BC. In the following two centuries the southbound arm of this great prehistoric pincer movement founded the nations of Hatti (known to us as the Hittites) and Mittanni, and imposed upon the indigenous people of the Aegean an aristocracy which Homer called the "brown-haired Achaeans", and which we refer to as the Myceneans, while part of it pressed on to overthrow the weak and divided government of the 14th Dynasty of Egypt, occupying that land for 200 years. The eastbound arm moved upon North-West India, crushing the militarily helpless but otherwise magnificent and powerful people of the Indus.Modern ethnography has dubbed this race "Indo-European", and they are in every sense the founders of the modem world. From them the Greeks and Romans are sprung, and most of the races of India as well as the Celts and the Teutonic peoples of the North; they are the ancestors of India and of every Western civilization. The reason for their success was their power in war, power based on a concept of fighting which in the second millennium BC was entirely new.This was the use of horses, not as cavalry in the accepted sense but drawing light chariots each carrying one or two armed men, a highly mobile armoured fighting vehicle. When these chariots were deployed in squadrons, acting together as disciplined corps, then the ancient formations of pedestrian spearmen were doomed."

"The material [Homer] used (c. 850 BC) had existed for many hundreds of years, passed on orally. In the most vivid and lively language he gives a dear picture of men's minds as well as their actions. These tales were accepted as a true record of events in Homer's own time and in classical Greece as well as during the whole of the Roman period and throughout the Middle Ages; it was the scepticism of eighteenth-and nineteenth-century scholarship which damned them as being mere fairy-tales. Then, during the last years of the nineteenth century, the discoveries of Heinrich Schliemann and Sir Arthur Evans transmuted what was thought to be the base metal of unfounded legend into the pure gold of ascertained fact. They uncovered Troy itself and Golden Mycenae, and the palaces of Minos in Crete...Wonderful as these material discoveries were, perhaps their greatest value was the proof that the story of Troy was no legend, but an historical event. This makes sense of the vivid realism of Homer's characters, his attention to small details of behaviour—how clearly we see the sleeping Diomedes...Here indeed is flesh to cover the archaeological bones."

"For more than 1,000 years the aristocratic charioteer was the arbiter of battle all over the world. Then, during the fourth century BC army formations similar to the ancient style of Egypt appeared in an infinitely more formidable guise—the legions of Rome. It was not long before the pendulum had swung and the legions swept everything before them, and for the next 600 years the Roman infantry was almost the only military force to be reckoned with in the civilized world. Even so, behind her northern and eastern frontiers were many nations of unsubdued barbarians...These nations were the force which eventually swung the pendulum back; they flooded into the Empire, not with chariots as of old, but as heavy cavalry. The weapon of impact had come into its own again, and would be the dominant force in the world until the English cloth-yard arrow began to weaken it during the fourteenth century; it finally gave way when the perfection of gunpowder in the fifteenth century brought in its turn another concept of war."

"“Empires do not arrive like storms; they seep in slowly, through fear, coin, and hunger.”"

"“I have bowed before kings and invaders alike, yet neither ruled my conscience.”"

"“The road from Lahore to Delhi is paved with skulls; only the banners change.”"

"“When the Afghan camp moved, the villages emptied before it, as if the earth itself had learned fear.”"

"“Neutrality is a crime when swords demand allegiance, yet silence sometimes saves more lives than loyalty.”"

"“They asked me for grain, horses, and men. I gave grain. I hid the men.”"

"“History will remember conquerors by their victories. It will remember us by our compromises.”"

"The Garonne separates the Gauls from the Aquitani; the Marne and the Seine separate them from the Belgae. Of all these, the Belgae are the bravest, because they are farthest from the civilisation and refinement of [our] Province, and merchants least frequently resort to them and import those things which tend to effeminate the mind; and they are the nearest to the Germans, who dwell beyond the Rhine, with whom they are continually waging war; for which reason the Helvetii also surpass the rest of the Gauls in valour, as they contend with the Germans in almost daily battles, when they either repel them from their own territories, or themselves wage war on their frontiers."

"It is well known that none of the German nations inhabit cities; or even admit of contiguous settlements. They dwell scattered and separate, as a spring, a meadow, or a grove may chance to invite them. Their villages are laid out, not like ours in rows of adjoining buildings; but every one surrounds his house with a vacant space, either by way of security against fire, or through ignorance of the art of building. For, indeed, they are unacquainted with the use of mortar and tiles; and for every purpose employ rude unshapen timber, fashioned with no regard to pleasing the eye. They bestow more than ordinary pains in coating certain parts of their buildings with a kind of earth, so pure and shining that it gives the appearance of painting. They also dig subterraneous caves, and cover them over with a great quantity of dung. These they use as winter-retreats, and granaries; for they preserve a moderate temperature; and upon an invasion, when the open country is plundered, these recesses remain unviolated, either because the enemy is ignorant of them, or because he will not trouble himself with the search."

"I had no idea that any of us could play as well as we did on Morning Glory. I hoped we could, but I didn’t know. The whole of the first album is about escape. It’s about getting away from the shitty, boring life of Manchester."

"We like annoying people. It’s a Manchester thing. It’s a trait. We just like pissing people off."

"For five successive days from that day, Caesar drew out his forces before the camp, and put them in battle order, that, if Ariovistus should be willing to engage in battle, an opportunity might not be wanting to him. Ariovistus all this time kept his army in camp: but engaged daily in cavalry skirmishes. The method of battle in which the Germans had practised themselves was this. There were 6000 horse, and as many very active and courageous foot, one of whom each of the horse selected out of the whole army for his own protection. By these [foot] they were constantly accompanied in their engagements; to these the horse retired; these on any emergency rushed forward; if any one, upon receiving a very severe wound, had fallen from his horse, they stood around him: if it was necessary to advance farther: than usual, or to retreat more rapidly, so great, from practice, was their swiftness, that, supported by the manes of the horses, they could keep pace with their speed.Perceiving that Ariovistus kept himself in camp, Caesar, that he might not any longer be cut off from provisions, chose a convenient position for a camp beyond that place in which the Germans had encamped, at about 600 paces from them, and having drawn up his army in three lines, marched to that place. He ordered the first and second lines to be under arms; the third to fortify the camp. This place was distant from the enemy about 600 paces, as has been stated. Thither Ariovistus sent light troops, about 16,000 men in number, with all his cavalry; which forces were to intimidate our men, and hinder them in their fortification. Caesar nevertheless, as he had before arranged, ordered two lines to drive off the enemy: the third to execute the work. The camp being fortified, he left there two legions and a portion of the auxiliaries; and led back the other four legions into the larger camp.The next day, according to his custom, Caesar led out his forces from both camps, and having advanced a little from the larger one, drew up his line of battle, and gave the enemy an opportunity of fighting. When he found that they did not even then come out [from their entrenchments], he led back his army into camp about noon. Then at last Ariovistus sent part of his forces to attack the lesser camp. The battle was vigorously maintained on both sides till the evening. At sunset, after many wounds had been inflicted and received, Ariovistus led back his forces into camp. When Caesar inquired of his prisoners, wherefore Ariovistus did not come to an engagement, he discovered this to be the reason—that among the Germans it was the custom for their matrons to pronounce from lots and divination whether it were expedient that the battle should be engaged in or not; that they had said, "that it was not the will of heaven that the Germans should conquer, if they engaged in battle before the new moon.""

"The whole of the shores of this sea [the Northern Ocean] as far as the Scaldis, a river of Germany, is inhabited by nations, the dimensions of whose respective territories it is quite impossible to state, so immensely do the authors differ who have touched upon this subject. The Greek writers and some of our own countrymen have stated the coast of Germany to be 2500 miles in extent, while Agrippa, comprising Rhætia and Noricum in his estimate, makes the length to be 686 miles, and the breadth 148. The breadth of Rhætia alone however very nearly exceeds that number of miles, and indeed we ought to state that it was only subjugated at about the period of the death of that general; while as for Germany, the whole of it was not thoroughly known to us for many years after his time. If I may be allowed to form a conjecture, the margin of the coast will be found to be not far short of the estimate of the Greek writers, while the distance in a straight line will nearly correspond with that mentioned by Agrippa."