"Italy, and the spring and first love all together should suffice to make the gloomiest person happy." - Bertrand Russell (philosopher)
"Open my heart and you will see graved inside of it, 'Italy'." – Robert Browning (poet)
"The Creator made Italy from designs by Michaelangelo." – Mark Twain (writer)
"You may have the universe if I may have Italy." – Giuseppe Verdi (composer)
"Everything you see I owe to spaghetti." – Sophia Loren (actress)
"How beautiful is sunset, when the glow of Heaven descends upon a land like thee, Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy!" Percy Bysshe Shelley (poet)
"In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance". - Orson Welles (actor and director)
"What is the fatal charm of Italy? What do we find there that can be found nowhere else? I believe it is a certain permission to be human, which other places, other countries, lost long ago." - Erica Jong (writer)
"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 (writer)
"For us to go to Italy and to penetrate into Italy is like a most fascinating act of self-discovery." – D.H. Lawrence (writer)
Artists, philosophers, writers through the centuries have been inspired by the beauty of Italy - we have selected some of their most inspiring or famous quotes, which reveal how much they were mesmerized by this unique country.
My favorite quote about Italy though is not included below, and comes from an Italian journalist and writer I admire, Beppe Severgnini; he is, I think, great at capturing Italy's essence. Here's the quote:
“First of all, let's get one thing straight. Your Italy and our Italia are not the same thing. Italy is a soft drug peddled in predictable packages, such as hills in the sunset, olive groves, lemon trees, white wine, and raven-haired girls. Italia, on the other hand, is a maze. It's alluring, but complicated. It's the kind of place that can have you fuming and then purring in the space of a hundred meters, or in the course of ten minutes. Italy is the only workshop in the world that can turn out both Botticellis and Berlusconis.” (from "La Bella Figura: A Field's Guide to the Italian Mind")
Do you have one that you love that is not included here?
