Italian Quotes

When evening comes, I return home and go into my study. On the threshold I strip off my muddy, sweaty clothes of everyday, and put on the robes of court and palace, and in this graver dress I enter the antique courts of the ancients and am welcomed by them, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, and for which I was born. And there I make bold to speak to them and ask the motives of their actions, and they, in their humanity, reply to me. And for the space of four hours I forget the world, remember no vexation, fear poverty no more, tremble no more at death; I pass indeed into their world.

One should never allow chaos to develop in order to avoid going to war, because one does not avoid a war but instead puts it off to his disadvantage

A wise man will see to it that his acts always seem voluntary and not done by compulsion, however much he may be compelled by necessity.

Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.

He who is drawn to something desirable does not desire to have it as a thought but as a thing.

You must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind.

Your brain is much better than you think; just use it!

He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust.

For as good habits of the people require good laws to support them, so laws, to be observed, need good habits on the part of the people.

Never lead your soldiers to battle if you have not first confirmed their spirit and known them to be without fear and ordered; and never test them except when you see that they hope to win.

Experience, the interpreter between creative nature and the human race, teaches the action of nature among mortals: how under the constraint of necessity she cannot act otherwise than as reason, who steers her helm, teaches her to act.

A single and distinct luminous body causes stronger relief in the objects than a diffused light; as may be seen by comparing one side of a landscape illuminated by the sun, and one overshadowed by clouds, and illuminated only by the diffused light of the atmosphere.

The motions of men must be such as suggest their dignity or their baseness.

In conclusion, the arms of others either fall from your back, or they weigh you down, or they bind you fast.

It is a common failing of man not to take account of tempests during fair weather.

A battle that you win cancels all your mistakes.

It is ill to praise, and worse to blame, the thing which you do not understand.

In time and with water, everything changes.

The unarmed man is not just defenseless - he is also contemptible.

In order for a war to be just, three things are necessary. First, the authority of the sovereign... Secondly, a just cause... Thirdly... a rightful intention.

Shadow is the diminution alike of light and of darkness, and stands between darkness and light.

Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.

When every province of the world so teems with inhabitants that they can neither subsist where they are nor remove themselves elsewhere.

Black is like a broken vessel, which is deprived of the capacity to contain anything.

Mistakes are made on two counts: an argument is either based on error or incorrectly developed.

And you who wish to represent by words the form of man and all the aspects of his membrification, relinquish that idea. For the more minutely you describe the more you will confine the mind of the reader, and the more you will keep him from the knowledge of the thing described. And so it is necessary to draw and to describe.

Do not imitate one another's style. If you do, so far as your art is concerned you will be called a grandson, rather than the son of Nature.

The Book of the science of Mechanics must precede the Book of useful inventions.

Perspective is to painting what the bridle is to the horse, the rudder to a ship.

For creation is not a change, but that dependence of the created existence on the principle from which it is instituted, and thus is of the genus of relation; whence nothing prohibits itbeing in the created as in the subject. Creation is thus said to be a kind of change, according to the way of understanding, insofar as our intellect accepts one and the same thing as notexisting before and afterwards existing.

Even the richest soil, if left uncultivated will produce the rankest weeds.

I don't doubt that every prince would like to be both; but since it is hard to accomodate these qualities, if you have to make a choice, to be feared is much safer than to be loved. For it is a good general rule about men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, liars, and deceivers, fearful of danger and greedy for gain....[love] is a link of obligation which men, because they are rotten, will break anything they think doing so serves their advantage; but fear involves dread of punishment, from which they can never escape.

Law is nothing other than a certain ordinance of reason for the common good, promulgated by the person who has the care of the community.

Since it is difficult to join them together, it is safer to be feared than to be loved when one of the two must be lacking.

Poetry is superior to painting in the presentation of words, and painting is superior to poetry in the presentation of facts. For this reason I judge painting to be superior to poetry.

Appear as you may wish to be

Whoever despises the high wisdom of mathematics nourishes himself on delusion and will never still the sophistic sciences whose only product is an eternal uproar.

Whatever you do in life, if you want to be creative and intelligent, and develop your brain, you must do everything with the awareness that everything, in some way, connects to everything else.

The new ruler must determine all the injuries that he will need to inflict. He must inflict them once and for all.

We may call painting the grandchild of nature.

Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.

The body of the earth is of the nature of a fish... because it draws water as its breath instead of air.

Learn diligence before speedy execution.

Politics have no relation to morals.

A prince ought to have two fears, one from within, on account of his subjects, the other from without, on account of external powers.

Fire destroys falsehood, that is sophistry, and restores truth, driving out darkness.

Therefore, it is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares and a lion to terrify the wolves

Reprove your friend in secret and praise him openly.

I awoke, only to see that the rest of the world is still asleep.

Advertisers constantly invent cures to which there is no disease.

You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand.

When fear is excessive it can make many a man despair.

Women are the most charitable creatures, and the most troublesome. He who shuns women passes up the trouble, but also the benefits. He who puts up with them gains the benefits, but also the trouble. As the saying goes, there's no honey without bees.

War is a profession by which a man cannot live honorably; an employment by which the soldier, if he would reap any profit, is obliged to be false, rapacious, and cruel.

Just as iron rusts from disuse, and stagnant water putrefies, or when cold turns to ice, so our intellect wastes unless it is kept in use.

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

Men in general judge more by the sense of sight than by the sense of touch, because everyone can see but few can test by feeling. Everyone sees what you seem to be, few know what you really are; and those few do not dare take a stand against the general opinion.

A man who wishes to make a profession of goodness in everything must necessarily come to grief among so many who are not good. Therefore, it is necessary for a prince, who wishes to maintain himself, to learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge and not use it according to the necessity of the case.

To be feared is much safer then to be loved.

He who is dying of hunger must be fed rather than taught.