Italy

Italy, officially the Italian Republic (Italian: Repubblica Italiana), is a unitary parliamentary republic in the southern European Union. To the north, Italy borders France, Switzerland, Austria, and Slovenia, and is roughly delimited by the Alpine watershed, enclosing the Po Valley and the Venetian Plain. To the south, it consists of the entirety of the Italian Peninsula and the two Mediterranean islands of Sicily and Sardinia, in addition to many smaller islands. Italy covers an area of 301,338 km2 (116,347 sq mi) and has a largely mediterranean climate; due to its shape, it is often referred to in Italy as lo Stivale (the Boot). With 61 million inhabitants, it is the 6th most populous country in Europe. Italy is a very highly developed country and has the third largest economy in the Eurozone and the eighth-largest in the world. Its current head of state is President Sergio Mattarella, and its current head of government is Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

Quotes are arranged alphabetically by author

• 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.
  • The cities of North Italy, with their distinguishing titles.
  • Reported in Classical and Foreign Quotations, 3rd ed. (1904), no. 228

• 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.
  • Joseph Addison, A Letter from Italy

• 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.
  • Muhammad Ali, poem written after winning the gold medal in the 1960 Olympic Summer Games in Rome, Italy, p. 35

• 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?
  • Chris Arnot, “Protestant v Catholic: which countries are more successful?”, The Guardian, (Mon 31 Oct 2011 13.00 EDT First published on Mon 31 Oct 2011 13.00 EDT)

• Iuravit in mea verba tota Italia.
  • The whole of Italy swore allegiance to me.
  • Augustus , Res Gestae Divi Augusti, XXV, lines 3-4

• Six o'clock already; I was just in the middle of a dream. I was kissing Valentino, by a crystal-blue Italian stream.
  • The Bangles, "Manic Monday", Different Light (1986)

• 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.
  • Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need (1991), New York: Fawcett Columbine, p. 146

• 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.'"
  • Robert Browning, De Gustibus. ii.

• Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar,
  Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore.
  • Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1818), Canto IV, Stanza 57; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 277.

• Venice once was dear,
  The pleasant place of all festivity,
  The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy.
  • Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1818), Canto IV, Stanza 3.

• 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.
  • Jeremy Clarkson, The World according to Clarkson (2005), p. 259

• In speaking of Italy, romance has omitted for once to exaggerate.
  • Benjamin Disraeli to Isaac Disraeli during his visit to Italy (2 September 1826), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Vol. I. 1804–1859 (1929), p. 104

• [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.
  • Rod Dreher, "Red Guards Then, Black Guards Now" (23 June 2020), The American Conservative

• 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
  • Italia! O Italia! thou who hast
    The fatal gift of beauty, which became
    A funeral dower of present woes and past,
    On thy sweet brow is sorrow plough'd by shame,
    And annals graved in characters of flame
  • Vicenzo Filicaja, Italia, English rendering by Lord Byron, Childe Harold, Canto IV, St 42.

• Beyond the Alps lies Italy.
  • James William Foley, Graduation Time Expression found in Livy Ab Urbe Bk 21 30.

• 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.
  • John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey (1729), quoted in Jeremy Black, The British and the Grand Tour, (1985), p. 174

• [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.
  • Graham Greene, as quoted in "A Point of View: Are tyrants good for art?" (August 2012), BBC News

• L'Italia farà da sé.
  • Italy will take care of itself.
  • Italian proverb; a common expression when Italy was in the process of reunification

• 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.
  • Massimo Introvigne, "A Scandal in Italy: Lists of Church of Almighty God Members Seeking Asylum in Italy Published in China", Bitter Winter (October 7, 2024)

• 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.
  • Henry James, A Little Tour In France, Chapter XXXIII: A Little Tour In France,

• 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.
  • Samuel Johnson, Boswell, Life of Johnson.

• [of the Sicilians] They never want to improve. They think themselves perfect. Their vanity is greater than their misery.
  • Burt Lancaster, The Leopard (1963).

• 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.
  • Alfred Legoyt (1861) cited in: Richard N. Juliani (June 2005). Building Little Italy. Penn State Press. pp. 184–. ISBN 978-0-271-02864-4. 

• 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.
  • Mairead Maguire in The Disturbing Expansion of the Military-Industrial Complex, Common Dreams, (14 October 2014)

• Fratelli d'Italia,
  l'Italia s'è desta,
  dell'elmo di Scipio
  s'è cinta la testa.
  • Brothers of Italy,
    Italy has woken,
    bound Scipio's helmet
    Upon her head.
  • Il Canto degli Italiani, lyrics by Goffredo Mameli, Italian national anthem (1847)

• In Italia, chi si fa valere all'estero non viene considerato.
  • In Italy, those who make a name for themselves in other countries are ignored.
  • Alessandra Martines, as quoted in Alessandra Martines: Parigi premia il mio talento ma l'Italia spesso mi ignora, Corriere della Sera, (8-26-2008)

• France is a country you have to drive through to get to Italy. That's all it's for.
  • James May, Top Gear

• 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.
  • George Meredith, "For the Centenary of Garibaldi", stanza 1, The Times (London, July 1, 1907), p. 9; reprinted in Phyllis B. Bartlett, ed., Poems of George Meredith (1978), p. 790

• Gli Italiani tutti ladroni.
  • All Italians are plunderers.
  • Napoleon Bonaparte, when in Italy.

• Tutti no... buona parte sì.
  • Not all but a good part (good part is buona parte, intending Buonaparte).
  • Supposed response by a lady who overheard him.
  • Reported in Samuel Taylor, Biographia Literaria, Satyrane's Letters No 2 (Ed 1870). Also reported as "I Francesci son tutti ladri", "Non tutti ma - buona parte" in Pasquin, when the French were in possession of Rome; see Catherine Taylor's Letters from Italy Vol I P 239 (Ed 1840) Quoted also by Charlotte Eaton, Rome in the Nineteenth Cent Vol II P 120 (Ed 1852).

• 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
  • Katia Piccardo, mayor of Rossiglione "Italy: 29 inches of rain in 12 hours sets new European record as extreme weather lashes country" (October 7, 2021)

• 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.
  • Edgar Allen Poe, Helen.

• Haec est Italia diis sacra
  • This is Italy, land sacred to the Gods.
  • Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia, Book III, sec. 46.

• 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.
  • Robin Prior & Trevor Wilson, The First World War (1999), 2001 paperback edition; ISBN 0–304-35984-X (even though Wikiquote is registering this as an invalid ISBN), p. 213

• My soul to-day
  Is far away
  Sailing the Vesuvian Bay
  • Thomas Buchanan Read, Drifting.

• "Look about you, and don't talk nor listen to talking".
  • John Ruskin, Mornings In Florence. ^[1].
• Italy, and the spring and first love all together should suffice to make the gloomiest person happy.
  • Bertrand Russell, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell‎ (1967), p. 185.

• How beautiful is sunset when the glow
  Of Heaven descends upon a land like thee,
  Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy!
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Julian and Maddalo, lines 55-57.

• Some jay of Italy,
  Whose mother was her painting, hath betray'd him:
  Poor I am stale, a garment out of fashion.
  • William Shakespeare, Cymbeline (1611), Act iii, Scene 4.

• Report of fashions in proud Italy, Whose manners still our apish nation Limps after in base imitation.
  • William Shakespeare, Richard II, Act ii, Scene 1.

• 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.
  • Because one has little fear of shocking vanity in Italy, people adopt an intimate tone very quickly and discuss personal things.
  • Stendhal, La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma) (1839), Chapter 6.

• 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!
  • Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad. Twain humorously depicts tourists being told that most every monument in Italy was designed or painted by "Michael Angelo", oblivious to the historic significance of Michelangelo.

• You may have the universe if I may have Italy.
  • Giuseppe Verdi, reported in Michael Angelo Musmanno, The Story of the Italians in America (1965), p. 255.

• Sit Romana potens Itala virtute propago
  • Let the Roman offspring be powerful, by Italian valor
  • Virgil , Aeneid, Book XII, line 827.

• Sum pius Aeneas, raptos qui ex hoste Penates
  classe veho mecum, fama super aethera notus.
  Italiam quaero patriam et genus ab Iove summo
  • I am pious Aeneas, who carries my Penates,
    snatched from the enemy, in my fleet with me, known by my fame above the ether.
    I seek my fatherland, Italy, and a race from highest Jove
  • Virgil , Aeneid, Book I, lines 378-380.

• In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed - they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love and five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!
  • Orson Welles, as the character Harry Lime in the Graham Greene film, The Third Man (1949).

• L'ltalie est un nom geographique.
  • Italy is only a geographical expression.
  • Klemens Wenzel, Prince von Metternich to Lord Palmerston (1847); reported in his Letter to Count Prokesch-Osten (November 19, 1849), Correspondence of Prokesch II 343; First used by Metternich in his Memorandum to the Great Powers (August 2, 1814).

• Religion in Italy
• Lombardy
• Matera
• Melfi
• Naples
• Rome
• Venice