Painters From Italy

"The water which rises in the mountain is the blood which keeps the mountain in life."

"Observe the light and consider its beauty. Blink your eye and look at it. That which you see was not there at first, and that which was there is there no more."

"To enjoy—to love a thing for its own sake and for no other reason."

"Science, knowledge of the things that are possible present and past; prescience, knowledge of the things which may come to pass."

"Where there is most power of feeling, there of martyrs is the greatest martyr."

"Intellectual passion drives out sensuality."

"While I thought I have been learning how to live, I have been learning how to die."

"The mind passes in an instant from east to west; and all the great incorporeal things resemble these very closely in speed."

"Every part is disposed to unite with the whole, that it may thereby escape from its own incompleteness."

"Reserve the great matters till the end, and the small matters give at the beginning."

"If any man could have discovered the utmost powers of the cannon, in all its various forms and have given such a secret to the Romans, with what rapidity would they have conquered every country and have vanquished every army, and what reward could have been great enough for such a service! Archimedes indeed, although he had greatly damaged the Romans in the siege of Syracuse, nevertheless did not fail of being offered great rewards from these very Romans; and when Syracuse was taken, diligent search was made for Archimedes; and he being found dead greater lamentation was made for him by the Senate and people of Rome than if they had lost all their army; and they did not fail to honour him with burial and with a statue."

"I ask at what part of its curved motion the moving cause will leave the thing moved and moveable."

"Do not reveal, if liberty is precious to you; my face is the prison of love."

"Tell me if anything was ever done."

"When I did well, as a boy you used to put me in prison. Now if I do it being grown up, you will do worse to me."

"This writing distinctly about the kite seems to be my destiny, because among the first recollections of my infancy, it seemed to me that, as I was in my cradle, a kite came to me and opened my mouth with its tail, and struck me several times with its tail inside my lips."

"May it please our great Author that I may demonstrate the nature of man and his customs, in the way I describe his figure."

"If you meet with any one who is virtuous do not drive him from you; do him honour, so that he may not have to flee from you and be reduced to hiding in hermitages, or caves or other solitary places to escape from your treachery; if there is such an one among you do him honour, for these are our Saints upon earth; these are they who deserve statues from us, and images..."

"It vexes me greatly that having to earn my living has forced me to interrupt the work and to attend to small matters."

"Like a whirling wind which rushes down a sandy and hollow valley, and which, in its hasty course, drives to its centre every thing that opposes its furious course... No otherwise does the Northern blast whirl round in its tempestuous progress..."

"I have seen motions of the air so furious that they have carried, mixed up in their course, the largest trees of the forest and whole roofs of great palaces, and I have seen the same fury bore a hole with a whirling movement digging out a gravel pit, and carrying gravel, sand and water more than half a mile through the air."

"The image of the sun where it falls appears as a thing which covers the person who attempts to cover it."

"A vase of unbaked clay, when broken, may be remoulded, but not a baked one."

"The ball of snow when, as it rolls, it descends from the snowy mountains, increases in size as it falls."

"The vine that has grown old on an old tree falls with the ruin of that tree, and through that bad companionship must perish with it."

"The bones of the Dead will be seen to govern the fortunes of him who moves them."

"Things that are separate shall be united and acquire such virtue that they will restore to man his lost memory."

"Men out of fear will cling to the thing they most fear."

"Happy will they be who lend ear to the words of the Dead."

"The solar rays will kindle fire on the earth, by which a thing that is under the sky will be set on fire, and, being reflected by some obstacle, it will bend downwards."

"The East will be seen to rush to the West and the South to the North in confusion round and about the universe, with great noise and trembling or fury."

"There will be many which will increase in their destruction."

"Animals will be seen on the earth who will always be fighting against each other with the greatest loss and frequent deaths on each side. And there will be no end to their malignity; by their strong limbs we shall see a great portion of the trees of the vast forests laid low throughout the universe; and, when they are filled with food the satisfaction of their desires will be to deal death and grief and labour and wars and fury to every living thing; and from their immoderate pride they will desire to rise towards heaven, but the too great weight of their limbs will keep them down. Nothing will remain on earth, or under the earth or in the waters which will not be persecuted, disturbed and spoiled, and those of one country removed into another. And their bodies will become the sepulture and means of transit of all they have killed. O Earth! why dost thou not open and engulf them in the fissures of thy vast abyss and caverns, and no longer display in the sight of heaven such a cruel and horrible monster."

"An infinite number of men will sell publicly and unhindered things of the very highest price, without leave from the Master of it; while it never was theirs nor in their power; and human justice will not prevent it."

"Many will there be who will give up work and labour and poverty of life and goods, and will go to live among wealth in splendid buildings, declaring that this is the way to make themselves acceptable to God."

"Men standing in opposite hemispheres will converse and deride each other and embrace each other, and understand each other's language."

"All the elements will be seen mixed together in a great whirling mass, now borne towards the centre of the world, now towards the sky; and now furiously rushing from the South towards the frozen North, and sometimes from the East towards the West, and then again from this hemisphere to the other."

"One shall be born from small beginnings which will rapidly become vast. This will respect no created thing, rather will it, by its power, transform almost every thing from its own nature into another."

"One who by himself is mild enough and void of all offence will become terrible and fierce by being in bad company, and will most cruelly take the life of many men, and would kill many more if they were not hindered by bodies having no soul, that have come out of caverns — that is, breastplates of iron."

"That which was at first bound, cast out and rent by many and various beaters will be respected and honoured, and its precepts will be listened to with reverence and love."

"There will be many men who will move one against another, holding in their hands a cutting tool. But these will not do each other any injury beyond tiring each other; for, when one pushes forward the other will draw back. But woe to him who comes between them! For he will end by being cut in pieces."

"There will be great winds by reason of which things of the East will become things of the West; and those of the South, being involved in the course of the winds, will follow them to distant lands."

"Oh! how foul a thing, that we should see the tongue of one animal in the guts of another."

"Many will be busied in taking away from a thing, which will grow in proportion as it is diminished."

"There will be many who will eagerly and with great care and solicitude follow up a thing, which, if they only knew its malignity, would always terrify them. Of those men, who, the older they grow, the more avaricious they become, whereas, having but little time to stay, they should become more liberal."

"Men will seem to see new destructions in the sky. The flames that fall from it will seem to rise in it and to fly from it with terror. They will hear every kind of animals speak in human language. They will instantaneously run in person in various parts of the world, without motion. They will see the greatest splendour in the midst of darkness. O! marvel of the human race! What madness has led you thus! You will speak with animals of every species and they with you in human speech. You will see yourself fall from great heights without any harm and torrents will accompany you, and will mingle with their rapid course."

"First, of things relating to animals; secondly, of irrational creatures; thirdly of plants; fourthly, of ceremonies; fifthly, of manners; sixthly, of cases or edicts or quarrels; seventhly, of cases that are impossible in nature [paradoxes], as, for instance, of those things which, the more is taken from them, the more they grow. And reserve the great matters till the end, and the small matters give at the beginning."

"A man was desired to rise from bed, because the sun was already risen. To which he replied: "If I had as far to go, and as much to do as he has, I should be risen by now; but having but a little way to go, I shall not rise yet.""

"The cock does not crow till it has thrice flapped its wings; the parrot in moving among boughs never puts its feet excepting where it has first put its beak. Vows are not made till Hope is dead."

"We see the most striking example of humility in the lamb which will submit to any animal; and when they are given for food to imprisoned lions they are as gentle to them as to their own mother, so that very often it has been seen that the lions forbear to kill them."