Federico De Roberto

"We went alone, outside the Cave, to Pozzuoli, to Baja.... What a heaven! What a sea... Do you know the grove behind Lake Lucrino, on the way to the Sibyl's cave? The land is sloping; You proceed at random, pushing aside the branches that touch your face. Through the foliage of the chestnut grove filters a fantastic, féerie-like green light; It seems to swim in the middle of the fluid emerald.... On May 20th... Era de maggio e te cadeano 'nzino A schiocche a schiocche le cerase rosse..... The redheads, the sweets, the fresh ciriegie were her lips...."

"letters anonymous are a providence. In view of fundamental human cowardice, it is providential that one can make one thing known or give advice without risking anything."

"Don't you know what kind of love I love? I love as the sea loves the shore: softly and furiously!"

"Think that love, hatred, ambition, envy, all the strongest passions end before us, and that, when all is over, one thing remains: the satisfaction of the duty accomplished...."

"When I saw many women gathered in some place, at the theatre, for example, or at the walk, I wondered; "Who would you love?" – And with one hand on my conscience, I answered, "All of them, except the old ones, the hunchbacks and the ugly ones.""

"If you want to succeed with women, don't make them laugh."

"«[...] and some well-informed people assured us that once, in the early days of the new government, he [the duke] had uttered a very significant phrase, revealing the ancient viceregal greed, the rapacity of the ancient Uzeda: 'Now that Italy is done, we must mind our own business...'" (Part Two, Chapter VIII)"

"After The Betrothed, the greatest novel in Italian literature. (Leonardo Sciascia)"

"These Viceroys are sculpted and struck one by one: they are arrogant and ignorant, in the past they knew how to sign at most, Donna Ferdinanda holds like a gospel the bolsa prose of the Teatro genologico di Sicilia of Mugnòs, Don Eugenio conceives a Herald Sicolo with ridiculous innovations of spelling and phonetics, Ferdinand then – let alone the Fool! – he is struck by the reading of Robinson Crusoe, which the rhetorical Don Cono Canalà has given him, and the new deputy Duke of Oragua is unable to articulate his motto looking out from the balcony in front of the crowd that cheers him. Only one thing endures, in the collapse of all values and in the universal conflict of interests: the common passion for things, the pride of belonging to a caste and a clan. (Sergio Campailla)"

"The artist feels lonely. Singular and aristocratic, he lives uneasily in the midst of a democratic and uniform society. He feels hated by it as useless, as haughty; and despises it. Therefore, his works are not addressed to the majority, but to the few initiated."

"You have to be yourself to create new values, to shape reality to your talent. We must be others, on the weak, on the powerless, on those who are incapable of living."

"Not peace, rest, quiet will be esteemed; but the struggle is the war; The war is a beneficent war, a war that is an indication of strength, of health, of exuberance."

"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."

"Federico de Roberto, Gli amori, Galli, C.E.1898."

"Federico de Roberto, I Viceré, Garzanti, Milano, C.E.1959."

"Federico de Roberto, I Viceré, preface by Sergio Campailla, BEN, C.E.1995."

"Federico de Roberto, Il colore del tempo, R. Sandron, Milano-Palermo, C.E.1900."

"Federico de Roberto, L'arte, Fratelli Bocca, C.E.1901."

"Federico de Roberto, L'Imperio, Oscar Mondadori, Milan C.E.1981."

"Federico de Roberto, La morte dell'amore, publisher Maia, Milan, C.E.1928."

"Federico de Roberto, La paura, in Romanzi, novelle e saggi, edited by Carlo A. Madrignani, Collezione I Meridiani, IV edizione, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Milan, C.E.1998. ISBN 88-04-21998-2"

"Federico de Roberto, La sorte, Libreria editrice Galli, C.E.1891."

"Federico de Roberto, Leopardi, Treves, 1921."

"Federico de Roberto, Processi verbali, Sellerio Editore, Palermo, C.E.1990."

"Federico de Roberto, Spasimo, Galli Publishing House, C.E.1897."