All Quotes

"Tell me, I beg you, what – among all things – has become the one thing for you, the thing you want to embrace in a unique way and enjoy forever."

"Omnia disce. Videbis postea nihil esse superfluum. Coartata scientia iucunda non est."

"Delicatus ille est adhuc cui patria dulcis est; fortis autem iam, cui omne solum patria est; perfectus vero, cui mundus totus exsilium est."

"Love seems to be the satisfaction of a person's heart towards something, because of something: it presents itself as desire in the search, and happiness in the satisfaction of possession; it appears as a race, as far as desire is concerned, and as rest, as far as the joy of possession is concerned."

"You have given me perfection of sensitivity, quickness of intelligence, strength of memory; you have given me the ability to express myself fluently, to present my thoughts pleasantly, to teach convincingly, to carry out my intentions, to behave pleasantly, to progress in my studies, to achieve my projects; you have given me comfort in adversity, caution in happy circumstances."

"O my soul, what do you think that sweet and gentle thing is, which devout souls usually feel and taste when they remember their beloved, and which usually enamours them so sweetly that they seem to be alienated and out of themselves? They feel joyful and glad in their consciences and forget all their pain: their soul rejoices, their intellect becomes clear, their heart is illuminated, their will becomes joyful."

"This sensible world […] is almost like a book written by the finger of God, that is, created by divine virtue, and individual creatures are like figures, not invented by human arbitrariness, but established by divine will to manifest the invisible wisdom of God. [...] It is therefore good to contemplate assiduously and admire divine works."

"When asked about the best conditions for learning, a scholar replied: “A humble spirit, commitment to research, a quiet life, silent inquiry, poverty, a foreign land; these circumstances make it easier to overcome the difficulties encountered during one's studies”. :*From Didascalicon."

"Peter does not need our lies or our flattery. Those who blindly and indiscriminately defend every decision of the Supreme Pontiff are the ones who most undermine the authority of the Holy See: they destroy, rather than strengthen, its foundations."

"[About Madonna] I disagree. Nor do I agree with the association of Madonna's name with the title of her LP Like a Virgin."

"I could have had a career in cinema. It was difficult to reinvent myself as a singer. I have a weak voice. I can swing, dance, I'm a show woman, but I had to overcome my extreme shyness. My legs trembled in front of 80,000 people."

"I do yoga and meditation. I'm a vegetarian and I've given up alcohol."

"It's better to be the one who leaves than the one who is left."

"My recurring dream, for many years now, is of a giant wave about to crash onto a beach where I am with a group of friends. I have premonitory dreams."

"I discovered Buddhism during my mother's illness, when I moved to the United States to care for her. It's hard to see a parent die: Buddhism was my reward, all my questions were answered. I eradicated my anger, I realized that it is a poison that I must no longer swallow. Before, I used to go to ashrams but I didn't feel like I belonged anywhere. I didn't renounce anything, Buddhism doesn't ask you to do that: when I was little and preparing for my Confirmation, I thought about becoming a nun."

"My hair has always been my strong point, everyone wondered who took care of it: instead, I trimmed it myself with scissors, on new moon nights, so that it would grow back stronger and faster."

"Those who eliminate animal products from their diet no longer get sick. And then meat makes you go bald."

"Lo dico per la prima volta: il problema fu la marijuana. Romina fumava quella robaccia anche quattro volte al giorno. E lo faceva da anni, ancor prima della scomparsa di Ylenia. Era un'altra donna. Fumava ed era allegra. Finito l'effetto, si intristiva e piangeva. Era irriconoscibile. Non esprimeva più quell'attaccamento alle cose, la passione per la vita, per quello che avevamo vissuto e costruito quegli anni. Fu l'inizio della fine."

"Marquis de Sade: Justine"

"Sadly for all of us, our culture does little to encourage boys to become great men. Television depicts men as stupid, or as sex addicts, and almost always intellectually and emotionally shallow. Men don't seem to care about these depictions, merely laughing them off. But I care about them, because our sons need good role models and given the amount of time boys spend with electronic media they need good role models on television. And of course, there is a bigger cultural fallout from the depreciation of masculinity and fatherhood, which is lower marriage rates, higher divorce rates, and the reality that many boys grow up in fatherless homes.This is a national tragedy, because boys need healthy encouragement from their fathers more than they need it from anyone else. In a boy's eyes, his father's words are sacred. They hold enormous power. His words can crush a boy or piece him back together after a fall. If a father is not there at all, there is a huge void in a boy's life — and as the depressing statistics remind us, boys who grow up without fathers are at a dramatically greater risk of drug abuse, alcohol abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, and ending up in prison.Encouragement from a father changes a boy's life. His words can ignite furious passion in a boy that will help him achieve any goal he sets out to accomplish. To a son, a dad's words are the final truth. If they are positive, a boy feels that he cannot be beaten; if they are negative, however, a son feels that he could never win. If you are a son reading this, you know exactly what I mean."

"Every boy needs schooling in virtues in order to become a great man. And any parent can school him because at the heart of virtue is masculine intuition. Parents don't have to construct the virtues and then pour then into the heart of their son. The virtues are there, but in small fragments that must be cleaned, shaped, and polished.The great burden for parents is finding time. Haste is the enemy of virtue, because it gives us no time to discuss, think, wonder, or pray; it forces us to push our boys to perform when we should be working with them. Give time back to your son. Give him time to dream. Encourage him to question and to think. Boys must have time to think upon virtues before they embrace them. Otherwise, virtues become nothing more than a disposable outer layer of clothing. A man can put them on or off, depending on his mood. But real virtues are not so disposable — they become part of the boy."

"Boys will search for virtue, just as they will search for truth and self-worth, because in the heart of a developing boy is the desire to know the truth, to know what is good, and to know that he has some reason to do the right thing. This is why boys are famous for setting out rules, standards of conduct for themselves. They derive their moral code from those they admire (usually their parents). Once a boy sets out his rules, he holds them as the best and highest way a boy (himself) should behave. If a boy succeeds in following his code of conduct, he's able to respect himself, and he believes others will respect him as well. Respect and honor are important to boys (and men)."

"I was having dinner at Il Dollaro, a restaurant in Milan that cost 660 lire, the equivalent of one dollar. Instead of spaghetti, the waiter brought a guitar and started singing. “What a voice!” I thought. It was Al Bano. During the day he worked at Breda, in the evening he waited tables. I told him to come to Rai the next morning."

"They asked me to do Grande Fratello [Big Brother] in all editions. But I like staying at home, I don't like socializing, being cooped up doesn't scare me. In the end, I'm not even afraid of living with others. However, my image, my relationship with my image, is not straightforward, so being filmed 24 hours a day... Perhaps, though, in the end it would be a form of shock therapy: that's how it was with flying, after all, I got over it by flying."

"Vulgar of manner, overfed, Overdressed and underbred; Heartless, Godless, hell's delight, Rude by day and lewd by night; Bedwarfed the man, o'ergrown the brute, Ruled by Jew and prostitute; Purple-robed and pauper-clad, Raving, rotting, money-mad; A squirming herd in Mammon's mesh, A wilderness of human flesh; Crazed with avarice, lust, and rum, New York, thy name's Delirium."

"At the top of most lists of good behavior is honesty. Boys are keenly attuned to honesty in those around them. And they feel it immediately when people around them sway from it. If a boy has a strong conscience, his eyebrows, nostrils, hairline, and mouth will all betray him if he tries to lie, because he will know he is breaking the code of conduct. Boys consider honesty a masculine quality, so to betray it is to be less of a man. Heroes, in a boy's eyes, are deserving of honor because they stand for what is right and just, and what is right and just is honesty.Living honestly feels better to boys than living with deception, even if that deception is meant to get them what they want. Boys like feeling strong and courageous, and telling the truth demands strength and honesty. Lying feels grungy. Lying makes boys fearful because they know it is a weakness. The liar is someone who is afraid of the truth.This is why boys are so open to being trained to tell the truth. They know that if you teach them to be truth tellers, you're teaching them to be strong. They know good boys, internally strong boys, tell the truth; wishy-washy boys lie. No one needs to tell them this; they know it. So in teaching honesty you have a ready audience. Don't blow it by encouraging your son to tell white lies — even if they're well intentioned. Young boys think in black-and-white terms. A statement is either true or it is false. The younger the boy, the less gray he feels in his thinking. When a parent coaxes him to tell "white lies" he is confused. The term is an oxymoron. In order to accommodate his parents' wishes, he puts lies into the pool of acceptable speech. Beginning such ambiguous training so early on in life leads boys down a slippery path."

"(About Putin and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine) He, with all his potential, with all the good things he has done for Russia, with this sense of peace he has sown for many years, now forces his people to cross a country called Ukraine with tanks, guns, rifles, and children fleeing with their mothers. [...] We cannot remain indifferent in the face of this sowing of death. We need life, we need peace. Instead of firing cannons, throw bread and medicine to those in need."

"I met Putin, I sang for him, I liked him in the past and now I don't like him anymore, but I was sorry to see myself described as “Putin's friend” in recent days. Unfortunately, I am not his friend. If I were his friend, I would take a nice walk with him in the Kremlin and say to him: let's sit down for five minutes with a nice bottle of wine, or vodka, or pure water. Let's talk about it. It is not right to attack a nation, a country, a family; it is absurd. Now you have to deal with history."

"I'm saying this for the first time: the problem was marijuana. Romina smoked that junk up to four times a day. And she had been doing it for years, even before Ylenia disappeared. She was a different woman. She smoked and was cheerful. When the effect wore off, she became sad and cried. She was unrecognizable. She no longer expressed that attachment to things, that passion for life, for what we had experienced and built over those years. It was the beginning of the end."

"A glass of whiskey before concerts. On the advice of Placido Domingo: “It frees up your esophagus and vocal cords,” he told me. A cure-all."

"Ever since I was a child, I sang all the songs by Domenico Modugno and Claudio Villa. My father had bought a radio, and I sang along to all the songs they played. It was a kind of karaoke. When I finished, people outside would applaud."

"I always lived with her [Romina Power] knowing that it could be the last day. But I always defended our marriage tooth and nail. My ego and alter ego wage their inner wars inside me. But when the end of the marriage came, it was really hard to accept. Love can be born and it can die, it is written, but I didn't like how it died."

"I sent the first check for nine million to my father in Cellino to buy a tractor."

"I am a conservative. If I analyze my life, I have never made any big changes."

"I'm not afraid of anything. I accepted the end of love, but what came after was truly unbearable. Otherwise, I would still be looking for opportunities to meet someone. But now I've made my choice."

"My father needed help with his fields, my mother pushed me to study."

"I think Putin is right. That part of Ukraine was Russia and is Russia. Did you know that Khrushchev was Ukrainian too? The separatists are fighting to remain Russian. It's like Istria: we all know it's Italian, even though we accepted the diktats of the superpowers."

"The separatists are asking for help: if a people wants to secede from a state, why not? A referendum was held in Crimea, 90 percent wanted to stay with Russia, and that was accepted."

"(About Vladimir Putin) They call him a dictator, but he has the people on his side."

"Putin has stood by the West even in the worst of times. He has always told us: I am your friend. However, if we are ungrateful and fail to understand his policy in Ukraine, then it is only right that he should say to us: be careful, I have Russia in my hands... No one did anything to Bush when he killed Saddam, who was no longer a threat. Yet Putin, who wants to help the Russians, is called a dictator. He is not attacking anyone. He is simply defending himself."

"We're selling everything now. From Perugina to Fiat, there's nothing left here. Are we Italians, or do we just say we are?"

"History defends us, and will continue to defend us in the future, but we can't keep thinking only about Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael. We're tied to memories, to our open-air museum."

"(About Vladimir Putin) I have supported him since before he was in the spotlight. He is a great man. He has a religious sense of life. He rules with an iron fist, and I see nothing wrong with that."

"No man should be in public office who can't make more money in private life."

"[About the wedding that never took place with Al Bano] There has been a lot of talk about it, but in reality, I never asked for it. Only at one point, about ten years ago, was it considered. Al Bano was planning his life and asked me, then it all fell through, but it wasn't a big deal. Of course, I would have liked it, marriage was part of my life plans, that's how I thought my life would be, I had the example of my family, not because other families aren't good, far from it... And then my horizons broadened, but nothing has changed."

"᾿Απομνημονεύεται δὲ ὑπὸ ᾿Ανδροκλείδου λόγος πολλήν τινα κατηγορῶν τοῦ Λυσάνδρου περὶ τοὺς ὅρκους εὐχέρειαν. ἐκέλευε γάρ, ὥς φησι, τοὺς μὲν παῖδας ἀστραγάλοις, τοὺς δὲ ἄνδρας ὅρκοις ἐξαπατᾶν, ἀπομιμούμενος Πολυκράτη τὸν Σάμιον, οὐκ ὀρθῶς τύραννον στρατηγός, οὐδὲ Λακωνικὸν τὸ χρῆσθαι τοῖς θεοῖς ὥσπερ τοῖς πολεμίοις, μᾶλλον δὲ ὑβριστικώτερον. ὁ γὰρ ὅρκῳ παρα-κρουόμενος τὸν μὲν ἐχθρὸν ὁμολογεῖ δεδιέναι, τοῦ δὲ θεοῦ καταφρονεῖν."

"As a composer, he enriched violin music by his numerous concertos and sonatas, and by a few dainty songs. However, it is as a virtuoso and as the founder of modern violin playing that Viotti will be remembered."

"Sharing things like that—again, disinformation, fake news—should not be coming from government officials. It is concerning and erodes trust even more when disinformation and fake news come from high-ranking officials themselves. So now that they’ve done it and there’s nothing we can do about it, the least they can do is acknowledge that the video they shared is false and not authentic."

"The trick to surviving your own death is to simply not die in the first place."

"The strongest argument for the truth of Christianity is the true Christian, the man filled with the Spirit of Christ. [...] The best proof of Christ's resurrection is a living Church, which itself is walking in new life, and drawing life from him who has overcome death."