Italy

"Bologna la grassa, Firenze la bella, Genova la superba, Lucca l’industriosa, Mantua la gloriosa, Milano la grande, Padova la forte, Pavia la dotta, Veneziala gran mendica, Verona la degna."

"Bologna the rich (or fat), Florence the beautiful, Genoa the superb, Lucca the busy, Mantua the glorious, Milan the grand, Padua the strong, Pavia the learned, Venice the great beggar, Verona the worthy."

"For wheresoe'er I turn my ravish'd eyes, Gay gilded scenes and shining prospects rise, Poetic fields encompass me around, And still I seem to tread on classic ground."

"Italians said: 'You're Greater than the Cassius of old'. We like your name, we like your game, So make Rome your home if you will. I said I appreciate your kind hospitality, But the USA is my country still."

"If maps were shaded like balance sheets, the bottom part of mainland Europe would be deepest red. Italy, Spain and Portugal are heavily in debt. They are also Catholic countries. Their predominantly Protestant neighbours to the north, including Germany and Scandinavia, are in comparatively good shape financially. Is that simply a coincidence, or is Max Weber's theory about the Protestant ethic being intertwined with the spirit of capitalism still valid, over 100 years on?"

"Iuravit in mea verba tota Italia."

"Six o'clock already; I was just in the middle of a dream. I was kissing Valentino, by a crystal-blue Italian stream."

"Speaking of normal visiting hours, Italy doesn't have any, as far as we can tell. Nothing is ever open when it's supposed to be open or closed when it's supposed to be closed, nor does it cost what it's supposed to cost. Also, the buses never seem to go where they're supposed to go. We realize we're making a sweeping generalization here, but as Giraldus Cambrensis so eloquently put it in Topgographia Hibernica, "tough shit." Nevertheless we urge you to spend some time in this country, although as a precautionary measure you should lose a couple of hundred pounds first."

"Italy, my Italy! Queen Mary's saying serves for me (When fortune's malice Lost her Calais) "Open my heart and you will see Graved inside of it, 'Italy.'""

"Venice once was dear, The pleasant place of all festivity, The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy."

"Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar, Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore."

"The Niobe of nations! there she stands, Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe."

"It is true that there was already a divide between the north and the south, but it is no less true that the unification of Italy was paradoxically achieved by accentuating this divide. The real industrial take-off of the north took place with money and labour from the south, and this gap has actually widened. The fight against brigandage was something horrible. The royal army, the royal carabinieri and the royal bersaglieri behaved like a colonial army. These things need to be said and taught in schools."

"Italy's youngsters complain, apparently, about having to live at home until they are 72 but that's because they spend all their money on suits and coffee and Alfa Romeos rather than mortgages."

"In speaking of Italy, romance has omitted for once to exaggerate."

"[T]he deepest level of hell is reserved for traitors. Why traitors? Because they make life in community impossible. In medieval Italy, cities were in a frequent state of war with each other. When they closed the city gates at night, everybody in the city had to trust that no one would open the gates during the night and let in troops of the enemy. If you could not have that trust, you couldn’t sleep. You couldn’t live, for fear that your neighbor would betray you, and everyone, to the enemy. To render everyone isolated from everyone else, and living in fear — this was hell."

"Italia, Italia, O tu cui feo la sorte, Dono infelice di bellezza, ond' hai Funesta dote d'infiniti guai Che in fronte scritti per gran dogha porte"

"Beyond the Alps lies Italy."

"Throughout all Italy beside, What does one find, but Want and Pride? Farces of Superstitious folly, Decay, Distress and Melancholy: The Havock of Despotick Power, A Country rich, its owners poor; Unpeopled towns, and Lands untilled, Bodys uncloathed, and mouths unfilled. The nobles miserably great, In painted Domes and empty state, Too proud to work, too poor to eat, No arts the meaner sort employ, They nought approve, nor ought enjoy. Each blown from misery grows a Saint, He prays from Idleness and fast from Want."

"[I]n Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, and they had 500 years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

"L'Italia farà da sé."

"Has Chinese espionage penetrated inside the Italian institutions? Or has somebody been bribed by money from Beijing? We are unable to answer these questions. But we are waiting to hear from those who can and should answer them."

"I was travelling northward, in 1870, after four months spent, for the first time, in Italy. It was the middle of January, and I had found myself, unexpectedly, forced to return to England for the rest of the winter. It was an insufferable disappointment; I was wretched and broken-hearted. Italy appeared to me at that time so much better than anything else in the world, that to rise from table in the middle of the feast was a prospect of being hungry for the rest of my days."

"A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority, from his not having seen what it is expected a man should see."

"[of the Sicilians] They never want to improve. They think themselves perfect. Their vanity is greater than their misery."

"Italy is, after France and perhaps in the same degree, the land in which love of country has the deepest roots in the hearts of its inhabitants. The fact is that perhaps nowhere else has nature been so prodigal with its enchantments and seductions. Therefore, although Italy has been, since the fall of the Caesars, the object of European covetousness, the eternal battlefield of powerful neighbors, and the theatre of the fiercest and most prolonged civil wars, her children have always refused to leave her. Save for some commercial colonies hastily thrown upon the shores of Asia by Genoa and Venice, history has not, in fact, recorded in Italy any important outward movement of population."

"The European Union and many of its countries, which used to take initiatives in the United Nations for peaceful settlements of conflict, are now one of the most important war assets of the U.S./NATO front. Many countries have also been drawn into complicity in breaking international law through U.S./U.K./NATO wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and so on."

"Fratelli d'Italia, l'Italia s'è desta, dell'elmo di Scipio s'è cinta la testa."

"In Italia, chi si fa valere all'estero non viene considerato."

"France is a country you have to drive through to get to Italy. That's all it's for."

"We who have seen Italia in the throes, Half risen but to be hurled to ground, and now, Like a ripe field of wheat where once drove plough, All bounteous as she is fair, we think of those Who blew the breath of life into her frame: Cavour, Mazzini, Garibaldi: Three: Her Brain, her Soul, her Sword; and set her free ruinous discords, with one lustrous aim."

"Gli Italiani tutti ladroni."

"Tutti no... buona parte sì."

"I'm back from the last inspection now. In these 72 endless hours the hours of sleep can be counted on the fingers of one hand and interrupted by a thousand thoughts for my fellow citizens, for my land. We have a myriad of disasters and open fronts"

"On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome."

"Haec est Italia diis sacra"

"Italy, having entered the war for gain and paid dearly in the outcome, emerged from the peace conference with a strong sense of grievance and with its system of government profoundly undermined. Steadily there after it became the endorser and ally of international gangsterism."

"My soul to-day Is far away Sailing the Vesuvian Bay"

""Look about you, and don't talk nor listen to talking"."

"Italy, and the spring and first love all together should suffice to make the gloomiest person happy."

"How beautiful is sunset when the glow Of Heaven descends upon a land like thee, Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy!"

"Some jay of Italy, Whose mother was her painting, hath betray'd him: Poor I am stale, a garment out of fashion."

"Report of fashions in proud Italy, Whose manners still our apish nation Limps after in base imitation."

"Comme on craint peu de choquer la vanité, on arrive fort vite en Italie au ton de l'intimité, et à dire des choses personnelles."

"In the Hebrew language the letters of the word "Italy" mean "island of divine dew": do we also want to erase the name of our homeland so as not to offend atheists? And the national anthem that calls to God."

"Antonio Socci, Quei muri appesi ai Crocefissi..., Libero (quoted in the blog Lo Straniero), 4 November 2009."

"Enough, enough, enough! Say no more! Lump the whole thing! say the Creator made Italy from designs by Michael Angelo!"

"You may have the universe if I may have Italy."

"Sit Romana potens Itala virtute propago"

"Sum pius Aeneas, raptos qui ex hoste Penates classe veho mecum, fama super aethera notus. Italiam quaero patriam et genus ab Iove summo"