Best 297 quotes in «rome quotes» category

The melancholy of the antique world seems to me more profound than that of the moderns, all of whom more or less imply that beyond the dark void lies immortality. But for the ancients that ‘black hole’ is infinity itself; their dreams loom and vanish against a background of immutable ebony. No crying out, no convulsions—nothing but the fixity of the pensive gaze. With the gods gone, and Christ not yet come, there was a unique moment, from Cicero to Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone. Nowhere else do I find that particular grandeur.

Then answered her son, who turns the stars in the sky: 'What way art thou bending fate, Mother? What dost thou ask For these thy ships? May vessels built by the hands Of mortal men claim an immortal right? Is Aeneas to pass, sure of the outcome, through dangers When nothing is sure? To what god is such power allowed?

Then none was for a party; Then all were for the state; Then the great man helped the poor, And the poor man loved the great; Then lands were fairly proportioned; Then spoils were fairly sold; The Romans were like brothers In the brave days of old.

The noise of horns and radios and shouted insults was part of the soundtrack of the capital (Hard-boiled P.I. Casta, on Rome, Italy)

The only point that everyone I spoke with in Rome agrees upon is that Armando al Pantheon is one of the city's last true trattorie. Given the location, Claudio and his family could have gone the way of the rest of the neighborhood a long time ago and mailed it in with a handful of fresh mozzarella and prosciutto. But he's chosen the opposite path, an unwavering dedication to the details- the extra steps that make the oxtail more succulent, the pasta more perfectly toothsome, the artichokes and favas and squash blossoms more poetic in their expression of the Roman seasons. "I experiment in my own small ways. I want to make something new, but I also want my guests to think of their mothers and grandmothers. I want them to taste their infancy, to taste their memories. Like that great scene in Ratatouille." I didn't grow up on amatriciana and offal, but when I eat them here, they taste like a memory I never knew I had. I keep coming back. For the cacio e pepe, which sings that salty-spicy duet with unrivaled clarity, thanks to the depth charge of toasted Malaysian peppercorns Claudio employs. For his coda alla vaccinara, as Roman as the Colosseum, a masterpiece of quinto quarto cookery: the oxtail cooked to the point of collapse, bathed in a tomato sauce with a gentle green undertow of celery, one of Rome's unsung heroes. For the vegetables: one day a crostini of stewed favas and pork cheek, the next a tumble of bitter puntarelle greens bound in a bracing anchovy vinaigrette. And always the artichokes. If Roman artichokes are drugs, Claudio's are pure poppy, a vegetable so deeply addictive that I find myself thinking about it at the most inappropriate times. Whether fried into a crisp, juicy flower or braised into tender, melting submission, it makes you wonder what the rest of the world is doing with their thistles.

There are many churches in my name and in the name of my apostles. The greatest and holiest is named after Peter; it is a place of great splendor in Rome. Nowhere can be found more gold.

There was a lonely summer Where I took the string and unraveled the magic circle from everything It was because of you, and what you did to me

There were things I wished I'd said And done But it is too late now So I go Heavy with my offering This book, this book

The student has his Rome, his whole glowing Italy, within the four walls of his library. He has in his books the ruins of an antique world and the glories of a modern one.

The sugar the ice on planets and stars The romance of the evening Coated in ice from your dead flesh Already rotting from within

The virtuous are among the the weakest and quickest to sin

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

the old and worn buildings held a theatrical magic to their fading façades. They were weathered almost by design; they almost looked like they had been lifted from some stage designer's idyllic dream for an opera setting. The dusty, powdery ochres, terracottas, pale blues and pine greens lit by that soft morning glow; the comforting sun's ascent to its daily station, high and shining above that glorious, sparkling old city.

There are things you want to say but don't There are things I want to say but I already said them A year ago or two or five, when we first met There were times I thought you knew I loved you You never knew We never were I died You died That's it

They say you can’t build Rome in a day, but I’m pretty sure you could destroy it in even less.

They took the red string which bound me to you They sank it in the center of the ocean

This oath is the oath we all swear. Not to a god, or a master, or to the Ludu Achillea...but to our sisters who stand here with us. Our sisters. This is the oath that binds us all, one to one, all to all, so that we are no longer free. We belong to each other. We are bound to each other. In swearing to each other, we free ourselves from the outside world, from the world of men, from those who would seek to bind us to Fate and that which would make us slaves. We sacrifice our liberty so that, ultimately, we can be truly free.

This revolutionary idea of Western citizenship—replete with ever more rights and responsibilities—would provide superb manpower for growing legions and a legal framework that would guarantee that the men who fought felt that they themselves in a formal and contractual sense had ratified the conditions of their own battle service. The ancient Western world would soon come to define itself by culture rather than by race, skin color, or language. That idea alone would eventually bring enormous advantages to its armies on the battlefield. (p. 122)

This time the senators met in the temple of the goddess Concord, or Harmony, a sure sign that affairs of state were anything but harmonious.

Thought Moves you past these lines Into conversation With the undead

To get rejected so vehemently Over and over again Until some said it was the rejection I was after No it wasn't I wanted the intensity that you sometimes promised

Triumphantly, he announced their deaths to the cheering crowd in a famous one-word euphemism: vixere, 'they have lived' – that is, 'they're dead'.

Tutt'intorno a noi scorreva la città di Roma, splendida nella sua indifferenza, eternamente sicura di sé, felice di prendersi i nostri soldi e posare per una foto, ma senza avere alla fin fine bisogno di niente e di nessuno.

We came to save the sacred writings. - Essenes to Eleazar, on collecting the Dead Sea Scrolls from the burning Temple. Jerusalem, 70 CE.

...we can endure neither our vices nor the remedies needed to cure them.

…we must be careful not to do our enemies’ work for them. To argue that to preserve our freedoms we must suspend our freedoms, that to safeguard elections we must cancel elections, that to defend ourselves from dictatorship we must appoint a dictator – what logic is this?

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 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……

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 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[.]

With them, it is all horrible Like anything could happen

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

All Gaul is divided into three parts.

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!

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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