People From Rome

"The free circulation of citizens, which is sacrosanct, cannot become the free circulation of criminals."

"[for indicted foreigners] simple expulsion is not enough (...) they must be arrested immediately, tried using a fast-track procedure, and then expelled to serve their sentences in the countries they came from, (...) it isn’t right that foreign criminals are being housed in our [Italian] jails."

"Italy as you know is the closest neighbour of both Tunisia and Libya so we are extremely concerned about the repercussions on the migratory situation in the southern Mediterranean."

"Galen himself, who was not unacquainted with Moses's writings, and with christianity, fancy'd the earth had a certain soul or mind imparted to it by the superior bodies."

"That which is, grows, while that which is not, becomes."

"A god, as I have said, commanded me to tell the first use also, and he himself knows that I have shrunk from its obscurity. He knows too that not only here but also in many other places in these commentaries, if it depended on me, I would omit demonstrations requiring astronomy, geometry, music, or any other logical discipline, lest my books should be held in utter detestation by physicians. For truly on countless occasions throughout my life I have had this experience; persons for a time talk pleasantly with me because of my work among the sick, in which they think me very well trained, but when they learn later on that I am also trained in mathematics, they avoid me for the most part and are no longer at all glad to be with me. Accordingly, I am always wary of touching on such subjects, and in this case it is only in obedience to the command of a divinity, as I have said, that I have used the theorems of geometry"

"This misplacing hath caused a deficience, or at least a great improficience in the sciences themselves. For the handling of final causes, mixed with the rest in physical inquiries, hath intercepted the severe and diligent inquiry of all real and physical causes, and given men the occasion to stay upon these satisfactory and specious causes, to the great arrest and prejudice of further discovery. For this I find done not only by Plato, who ever anchoreth upon that shore, but by Aristotle, Galen, and others which do usually likewise fall upon these flats of discoursing causes."

"Employment is Nature's physician, and is essential to human happiness."

"Triste est omne animale post coitum, praeter mulierem gallumque"

"Diogenes compared them to fig-trees growing over precipices; for their fruit was devoured by daws and crows, not by men."

"Quod optimus medicus sit quoque philosophus."

"But it is best of all to look at the human skeleton with your own eyes."

"The fact is that those who are enslaved to their sects are not merely devoid of all sound knowledge, but they will not even stop to learn!"

"It would be better, I think, for the man who really seeks the truth not to ask what the poets say; rather, he should first learn the method of finding the scientific premises that I discussed in the second book; then he should train and exercise himself in this method; and when his training is sufficiently advanced, then, as he approaches each particular problem, he should enquire into the premise needed for proving it, which premise he should take from simple sense-perception, which from experience, whether drawn from life or from the arts, which from the truths clearly apprehended by the mind, in order to draw out from them the desired conclusion."

"Much music marreth men's manners."

"Diogenes received an invitation to dine with one whose house was splendidly furnished, in the highest order and taste, and nothing therein wanting. Diogenes, hawking, and as if about to spit, looked in all directions, and finding nothing adapted thereto, spat right in the face of the master. He, indignant, asked why he did so? "Because," Diogenes, "I saw nothing so dirty and filthy in all your house. For the walls were covered with pictures, the floors of the most precious tessellated character — and ranged with the various images of gods, and other ornamental figures.""

"He who has two cakes of bread, let him dispose of one of them for some flowers of the narcissus; for bread is the food of the body, and the narcissus is the food of the soul."

"Diogenes the Cynic, it is related, was mighty of all people in regard to everything from self-control to endurance. He indulged in sexual lusts, not associating it with pleasure, an attractive good thing to some, but because of the harm that the retention of semen would cause if he avoided the habit of releasing it. When a prostitute who promised to visit him was delayed for some time, he rubbed his genitals with his hand, ejecting semen. After the whore arrived, he sent her away, saying: "my hand celebrated the wedding-hymn first." But it is clearly correct that, likewise, the disciplined man does not on account of pleasure indulge in lusts, but in order to relieve the hindrance acting as if this was not associated with pleasure."

"The Roman physician Galen claimed that women could not conceive in rape—could not, in fact, conceive without an orgasm based in pleasure and consent."

"The laws of nature, as analyzed mathematically and descriptively by Ptolemy and Galen, bore an interesting, and perhaps not entirely accidental similarity to the law of nations and of nature, as discerned by a long succession of Roman jurists. ...The concept of an objective law applicable to human affairs, yet operating in accord with Nature and Reason and apart both from divine revelation and from human whim or passion, was peculiar to Rome and societies descended from Rome."

"Galen, in the third section of his book, "The Use of the Limbs," says correctly that it would be in vain to expect to see living beings formed of the blood of menstruous women and the semen virile, who will not die, will never feel pain, or will move perpetually, or shine like the sun. This dictum of Galen is part of the following more general proposition:—Whatever is formed of matter receives the most perfect form possible in that species of matter; in each individual case the defects are in accordance with that individual matter."

"Intellectual property is the oil of the 21 century. Look at the richest men a hundred years ago; they all made their money extracting natural resources or moving them around. All today’s richest men have made their money out of intellectual property."

"My advice to anyone who loves to read or write is to love words first. Look at fonts and at print carefully. Ignore what they mean and just marvel at what they look like."

"Science that abdicates its cultural values risks being perceived as an extension of technology, an instrument in the hands of political or economic power. Humanity that disavows science risks falling into the hands of superstition."

"Science is incapable of supplying answers to ultimate questions about why things exist and what their purpose is."

"Your brother, Cesar de Borgia, Elect of Valencia"

"However much Rome may be in the habit of speaking and writing, for my own part, I shall give these libellers a lesson in good manners."

"[I] had not forgotten the way to reconquer it [Urbino]."

"Aut Caesar, aut nihil."

"To all our Lieutenants, Castellains, Captains, Condottieri, Officers, Soldiers and Subjects, to whom these presents may be known, we commit and command that to our Most Excellent and Most Beloved Private Architect and General Engineer Leonardo Vinci, bearer of the same, and who has our Commission to survey the holds and fortresses of our States, in order that according to their exigencies and his judgment we may equip them, they are to give free pass, exempt from all public toll to himself and his company, and friendly reception; and to allow him to see, measure and estimate all he may wish. And to this effect they shall order men on his requisition and lend him all the help, assistance and favours he may request, it being our wish that for all works to be done in our Dominions any engineer be compelled to consult him and to conform to his opinion ; and to this may none presume to act in opposition, if it be his pleasure not to incur our indignation."

"Most Illustrious and most Excellent Lady, our very dear Sister,- Confident of the circumstance that there can be no more efficacious and salutary medicine for the indisposition from which you are at present suffering than the announcement of good and happy news, we advise you that at this very moment we have received sure tidings of the capture of Camerino. We beg that you will do honour to this message by an immediate improvement, and inform us of it, because, tormented as we are to know you so ill, nothing, not even this felicitous event, can suffice to afford us pleasure. We beg you also kindly to convey the present to the Illustrious Lord Don Alfonso, your husband and our beloved Brother-in-law, to whom we are not writing to-day."

"The constellations this year seem unfavourable to rebels.""

"A matter which would be easily accomplished, as the best men of that State have already offered themselves to me."

"What cruelties were not the result of his? Who could count all his crimes?"

"The rather more dubious side of Nietzsche's 'evolutionism' is his glorification of the warrior -- particularly when, as an exemplification of the warrior-hero, he chooses an archetypal 'spoilt brat' like Cesare Borgia."

"The object of his campaign has not been to tyrannise, but to extirpate tyrants."

"The princes of the Italian Renaissance routinely used intrigue, treachery, and murder to further their aims. The most notorious among them were the Borgias, whose despotic rule of church and state made a lasting impression. Their leader, Pope Alexander VI, was a greedy and lecherous reprobate. His daughter Lucrezia gained an undeserved reputation for poisoning and incest, and her cold-blooded brother Cesare stopped at nothing to gain and increase power. Together, they terrorized Rome and expanded its domain. Their enterprise collapsed when Alexander Vi died, possibly by poisoning."

"Saturday evening the Duke Valentino arrived here, having come by estafette; His gracious majesty very cheerfully greeted and embraced him and conducted him to the Castle, where he gave him the room nearest to his own, he himself speeding supper and ordering several courses, and that evening three or four times he went to the room even in his nightshirt when he was going to bed. And he insisted on giving the Duke his own shirts and gowns and clothes to wear, the Duke Valentino not having as many waggons as he has horses. In one word, one could not do more for a son or a brother."

"There is no city, country-side, or castle, nor any place in all Romagna, nor officer or minister of the duke's, who does not know of these abuses; and, amongst others, the famine of wheat occasioned by the traffic which he held against our express prohibition, sending out such quantities as would abundantly have sufficed for the people and the army."

"Ah! Falso ribaldo!"

"Without any sign of alteration."

"This is what I wanted to tell Monsignor di Volterra [Soderini] when he came to Urbino, but I could not entrust him with the secret. Now that my opportunity has come, I have known very well how to make use of it, and I have done a great service to your masters."

"Diet of bankrupts... To-day, Messer Paolo is to visit me, and to-morrow there will be the cardinal; and thus they think to befool me, at their pleasure. But I, on my side, am only dallying with them. I listen to all they have to say and bide my own time."

"This government of yours does not please me, and I cannot trust it; you must change it and give me a pledge that you will observe everything you promised; otherwise you will soon realize that I do not want to live this way; and I will not ...my friend ...my enemy."

"senza segno d'alterazione alcuna"

"Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy."

"Ô bouches l'homme est a la recherche d'un nouveau langage Auquel le grammairien d'aucune langue n'aura rien à dire"

"Come to the edge. We might fall. Come to the edge. It's too high! COME TO THE EDGE! And they came And he pushed And they flew."

"L'amour s'en va comme cette eau courante L'amour s'en va Comme la vie est lente Et comme l'Espérance est violente"

"Passons passons puisque tout passe Je me retournerai souvent Les souvenirs sont cors de chasse Dont meurt le bruit parmi le vent"