Best 297 quotes in «rome quotes» category

What can you possibly say about Rome? That it's eternal? That all roads lead to it? That it wasn't built in a day? That when there you should do as the locals do? Please. For millennia, Rome has embodied and repelled every cliché, description, and act of comprehension or explanation applied to it. As a city, it has been built and destroyed and rebuilt by - and has celebrated and signified and outlasted - caesars and barbarians and popes and Fascists and prophets and artists and pilgrims and schemers and migrants and lovers and fools.

What happened? It took Gibbon six volumes to describe the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, so I shan’t embark on that. But thinking about this almost incredible episode does tell one something about the nature of civilisation. It shows that however complex and solid it seems, it is actually quite fragile. It can be destroyed. 

What are its enemies?
 
Well, first of all fear — fear of war, fear of invasion, fear of plague and famine, that make it simply not worthwhile constructing things, or planting trees or even planning next year’s crops. And fear of the supernatural, which means that you daren’t question anything or change anything. The late antique world was full of meaningless rituals, mystery religions, that destroyed self-confidence. And then exhaustion, the feeling of hopelessness which can overtake people even with a high degree of material prosperity. 

There is a poem by the modern Greek poet, Cavafy, in which he imagines the people of an antique town like Alexandria waiting every day for the barbarians to come and sack the city. Finally the barbarians move off somewhere else and the city is saved; but the people are disappointed — it would have been better than nothing. Of course, civilisation requires a modicum of material prosperity—

What civilization needs:

confidence in the society in which one lives, belief in its philosophy, belief in its laws, and confidence in one’s own mental powers. The way in which the stones of the Pont du Gard are laid is not only a triumph of technical skill, but shows a vigorous belief in law and discipline. Vigour, energy, vitality: all the civilisations—or civilising epochs—have had a weight of energy behind them. People sometimes think that civilisation consists in fine sensibilities and good conversations and all that. These can be among the agreeable results of civilisation, but they are not what make a civilisation, and a society can have these amenities and yet be dead and rigid.

What investment banking is to the ambitious and acquisitive today, the pepper trade was to the Romans—the most direct route to great riches.

What is living But fear

What is the dull river Lethe I don't know, but I think it's evil And when I drink of it I don't see stars Instead I see the lime groves

What's worse To never have them To have them only in part What's worse To be endlessly waiting To be endlessly waiting What's worse—nothing or nothing What's worse

When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home, Let him combat for that of his neighbours; Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome, And get knocked on the head for his labours. To do good to Mankind is the chivalrous plan, And is always as nobly requited; Then battle fro Freedom wherever you can, And, if not shot or hanged, you'll get knighted.

When friends come to Rome in early summer to visit me I like to take them to the Pantheon during thunderstorms and stand them beneath the opening of the feathery, perfectly proportioned dome as rain falls through the open roof against the marble floor and lightning scissors through the wild and roiled skies. The emperor Hadrian rebuilt the temple to honor gods no longer worshiped, but you can feel the brute passion in that ardor in the Pantheon's grand and harmonious shape. I think gods have rarely been worshiped so well.

when you walk the path of revenge, know that someone will always follow your trail

Why? Because a demon is after me And he she it has been Since the day I was born

Why are you walking like that?” Rome asked, running a broad hand through his short hair, his glittering green eyes flicking down my legs before settling on my face. “Like what?” I asked, as he fell into step beside me. ... “Like you’re scared of the ground,” he replied on a snort.

[W]ithin a generation, the Roman order was shaken to its core and Roman armies, as one contemporary put it, 'vanished like shadows'. In 376, a large band of Gothic refugees arrived at the Empire's Danube frontier, asking for asylum. In a complete break with established Roman policy, they were allowed in, unsubdued. They revolted, and within two years had defeated and killed the emperor Valens - the one who had received them - along with two-thirds of his army[.]

What is deemed as “his-story” is often determined by those who survived to write it. In other words, history is written by the victors...Now, with the help of the Roman historian Tacitus, I shall tell you Queen Boudicca’s story, her-story……

You are the kind of thing who takes from me And never gives anything away And when you call to me with your synchronicity I can't help but run to you You my horrible star I can't help but run to you when you call for me

You have not studied the histories of ancient times, and perhaps know not the life that breathes in them; a soul of beauty and wisdom which had penetrated my heart of hearts.

Your Life Determines Your Journey & Your Journey Determines Your Life

You've got something that I don't have. Innocence. Ur eyes express it, & I can read everything in them". #MilanoVeneziani. #ItalianPassion

You were Something or someone I loved But I am a traveler And I love no one But the empty road

You will realize you love me But it will be too late You will cry out for me I will be long gone This is not a wish But what I knew to be so

A bad peace is even worse than war.

A crowd pagan as ever imperial Rome was, eager, careless, with an animal vigour unlike that of any European crowd that I have ever looked at.

With them, it is all horrible Like anything could happen

All Gaul is divided into three parts.

Ancient art was the tyrant of Egypt, the mistress of Greece and the servant of Rome.

All the contagion of the south light on you, You shames of Rome! you herd of--boils and plagues Plaster you o'er; that you may be abhorr'd Further than seen, and one infect another Against the wind a mile!

You know, I loved you I loved you I was wrong

A small number of temples was protected by the fears, the venality, the taste, or the prudence of the civil and ecclesiastical governors. The temple of the Celestial Venus at Carthage, whose sacred precincts formed a circumference of two miles, was judiciously converted into a Christian church; and a similar consecration has preserved inviolate the majestic dome of the Pantheon at Rome.

Archbishop Milingo is a good Bishop and his contention that there are satanists in Rome is completely correct. Anybody who is acquainted with the state of affairs in the Vatican in the last 35 years is well aware that the prince of darkness has had and still has his surrogates in the court of St. Peter in Rome.

Babylon violated diminishes Alexander; Rome enslaved diminishes Caesar; massacred Jerusalem diminishes Titus. Tyranny follows the tyrant. Woe to the man who leaves behind a shadow that bears his form.

Be ever more convinced that your guardian angel is really present, that he is ever at your side. St. Frances of Rome always saw him standing before her, his arms clasped at his breast, his eyes uplifted to Heaven; but at the slightest failing, he would cover his face as if in shame, and at times, turn his back to her.

And I have the sunset, and the Tuscan wine, and the white teeth of the women in Rome. I am a traveler in Romance.

Can any one be so indifferent or idle as not to care to know by what means, and under what kind of polity, almost the whole inhabited world was conquered and brought under the dominion of the single city of Rome, and that too within a period of not quite fifty-three years?

But tonight, because Rome had fallen and Felix was dead, because of Valerius’s shame, the empty hut seemed horribly lonely, and there was a small aching need in him for somebody to notice, even if they were not glad, that he had come home.

Constantinople was the principal seat and fortress of Arianism; and, in a long interval of forty years, the faith of the princes and prelates who reigned in the capital of the East was rejected in the purer schools of Rome and Alexandria.

At the hour of midnight the Salerian gate was silently opened, and the inhabitants were awakened by the tremendous sound of the Gothic trumpet. Eleven hundred and sixty-three years after the foundation of Rome, the Imperial city, which had subdued and civilised so considerable a part of mankind, was delivered to the licentious fury of the tribes of Germany and Scythia.

Creationism: the theory that Rome was built in a day.

Farewell unhappy, hopeless, blasphemous Rome! The Wrath of God has come upon you, as you deserve. We cared for Babylon, and she is not healed; let us then leave her, that she may become the habitation of dragons, spectres, and witches.

Did you ever see so many pee-wee hats, Carl?" "They're beanies." "They call them pee-wees in Brooklyn." "But I'm not in Brooklyn." "But you're still a Brooklynite." "I wouldn't want that to get around, Annie." "You don't mean that, Carl." "Ah, we might as well call them beanies, Annie." "Why?" "When in Rome do as the Romans do." "Do they call them beanies in Rome?" she asked artlessly. "This is the silliest conversation.

Fit men walking around and bathing, it would be just like being in Ancient Rome [on a footballers dressing room

Fellini is a just a province kid. Rome exists for Fellini, not the other way around.

Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!

HOLLY TREE (Ilex aquifolium) is a symbol of good will and is associated with sun gods. In Rome the holly was sacred to Saturn and was employed in the rites of the Saturnalia, where it was a symbol of health and happiness. The holly is an evergreen and therefore is associated with the sun god.

From Rome, now the nuncio is on the border where [Ukrainians] are fighting, helping soldiers and the wounded. The Church of Rome has sent so much help there. It's always peace, agreements. We must respect the Minsk accords and so on. This is the entirety. But, don't get scared by that phrase. And this is a lesson that a piece of news must be interpreted with the hermeneutic of everything and not just a part.

I am singing now while Rome burns.

Great lecturers seldom hesitate to use dramatic tricks to enshrine their precepts in the minds of their audiences, and at Yale perhaps Chauncey B. Tinker was the most noted. To read one of his lectures was like reading a monologue of the great actress Ruth Draper--you missed the main point. You missed the drop in his voice as he approached the death in Rome of the tubercular Keats; you missed the shaking tone in which he described the poet's agony for the absent Fanny with him his love had never been consummated; you missed the grim silence of the end.

I came, I saw, I conquered.

I did not bring Deism into Bavaria more than into Rome. I found it here, in great vigour, more abounding than in any of the neighboring Protestant States. I am proud to be known to the world as the founder of the Illuminati.

If we could survive without a wife, citizens of Rome, all of us would do without that nuisance.

If Rome gets to decide everything for the north and for the south, it's not a good and just thing.

If we could survive without a wife, citizens of Rome, all of us would do without that nuisance; but since nature has so decreed that we cannot manage comfortably with them, nor live in any way without them, we must plan for our lasting preservation rather than for our temporary pleasure.