Italian Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Italian. Here they are! All 40 of them:

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I imagine hell like this: Italian punctuality, German humour and English wine.
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Peter Ustinov
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There is no greater sorrow Than to recall a happy time When miserable.
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Dante Alighieri
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Italians have a little joke, that the world is so hard a man must have two fathers to look after him, and that's why they have godfathers.
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Mario Puzo (The Godfather (The Godfather, #1))
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Colpo di fulmine. The thunderbolt, as Italians call it. When love strikes someone like lightning, so powerful and intense it can’t be denied. It’s beautiful and messy, cracking a chest open and spilling their soul out for the world to see. It turns a person inside out, and there’s no going back from it. Once the thunderbolt hits, your life is irrevocably changed.
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J.M. Darhower (Sempre (Sempre, #1))
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A forty-foot worm?" Will muttered to Jem as they moved through the Italian garden, their boots - thanks to a pair of Soundless runes - making no noise on the gravel. "Think of the size of the fish we could catch." Jem's lips twitched. "It's not funny, you know." "It is a bit.
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Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3))
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And then there was you. You changed everything I believed in. You know that line from Dante that I quoted to you in the park? 'L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle'?" Her lips curled a little at the sides as she looked up at him. "I still don't speak Italian." "It's a bit of the very last verse from Paradiso - Dante's Paradise. 'My will and my desire were turned by love, the love that moves the sun and the other stars.' Dante was trying to explain faith, I think, as an overpowering love, and maybe it's blasphemous, but that's how I think of the way I love you. You came into my life and suddenly I had one truth to hold on to - that I loved you, and you loved me.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Fallen Angels (The Mortal Instruments, #4))
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Happiness is German engineering, Italian cooking, and Belgian chocolate.
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Patricia Briggs (Moon Called (Mercy Thompson, #1))
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Life was better than he expected with his new Italian family inheritance, and it felt good to take a deep breath without fear of someone attacking him or his family.
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Carolyn M. Bowen (Legacy of Shadows: An International Crime Thriller (The Family Legacy Series Book 2))
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Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good.
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Alice May Brock
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Love, that moves the sun and the other stars
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Dante Alighieri (Paradise (The Divine Comedy, #3))
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Italian men are like show poodles. Sometimes they look so good I want to applaud.
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Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
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In this world . . . It's Heaven when: The French are chefs The British are police The Germans are engineers The Swiss are bankers And the Italians are lovers It's Hell when: The English are chefs The Germans are police The French are engineers The Swiss are lovers And the Italians are bankers.
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Hidekaz Himaruya (Hetalia: Axis Powers, Vol. 2 (Hetalia: Axis Powers, #2))
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The Mother of God. Good-looking. Well-dressed. A good person. Knows how to make the absolute best of a situation. And never uppity about any of it.
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Kathleen Zamboni McCormick (Dodging Satan: My Irish/Italian, Sometimes Awesome, But Mostly Creepy, Childhood)
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Each of us is a book waiting to be written, and that book, if written, results in a person explained.
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Thomas M. Cirignano (The Constant Outsider: Memoirs of a South Boston Mechanic)
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I’m half Italian.” β€œWhich half?” the words were out before Tessa could stop them. Was she flirting with him? She never flirted with men. His lips curved in a slow, sexy smile that made her heart trip. β€œFrom the waist down.
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Pamela Clare (Hard Evidence (I-Team, #2))
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Imagine," she said, after registering, "a whole city of gorgeous Italian guys. They can say anything to me, and it'll be sexy." "You'll be so easy," Rashmi said. "Would you like-ah to order-ah the spa-ghe-tti? 'Oh, do me, Marco!
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Stephanie Perkins (Anna and the French Kiss (Anna and the French Kiss, #1))
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I have always hated crowds. I like deserts, prisons, and monasteries. I have discovered, too, that there are fewer idiots at 3000 meters above sea level than down below.
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Jean Giono (An Italian Journey (Marlboro Travel))
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An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.
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Edith Wharton
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Amor, ch'al cor gentile ratto s'apprende prese costui de la bella persona che mi fu tolta; e 'l modo ancor m'offende. Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona, Mi prese del costui piacer sì forte, Che, come vedi, ancor non m'abbandona..." "Love, which quickly arrests the gentle heart, Seized him with my beautiful form That was taken from me, in a manner which still grieves me. Love, which pardons no beloved from loving, took me so strongly with delight in him That, as you see, it still abandons me not...
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Dante Alighieri (Inferno)
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Nella vita: chi non risica, non rosica," he said finally, his voice quiet. "In life: nothing ventured, nothing gained. My mom used to tell us that. It's been a long time, but I can still hear her saying it.
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J.M. Darhower (Sempre (Sempre, #1))
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You are the trip I did not take, you are the pearls I could not buy, you are my blue Italian lake, you are my piece of foreign sky. You are my Honolulu moon, you are the book I did not write, you are my heart's unuttered tune, you are a candle in my night. You are the flower beneath the snow, in my dark sky a bit of blue, answering disappointment's blow with "I am happy! I have you!
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Anne Campbell
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It isn't such a bad thing to always know that someone on the other side of the world cares about you.
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Laura Fraser (An Italian Affair)
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Mary’s supposed to be the opposite of Eve, but I bet she had childbirth pain just like everyone else.
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Kathleen Zamboni McCormick (Dodging Satan: My Irish/Italian, Sometimes Awesome, But Mostly Creepy, Childhood)
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A Frenchman's self-assurance stems from his belief that he is mentally and physically irresistibly fascinating to both men and women. An Englishman's self-assurance is founded on his being a citizen of the best organized state in the world and on the fact that, as an Englishman, he always knows what to do, and that whatever he does as an Englishman is unquestionably correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets. A Russian is self-assured simply because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe in the possibility of knowing anything fully.
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Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace)
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I felt for the tormented whirlwinds Damned for their carnal sins Committed when they let their passions rule their reason.
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Dante Alighieri
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Blessed art thou among women.” Who can’t relate to a line like that? It’s just saying you’re one holy chick and everyone, even God, is totally into you.
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Kathleen Zamboni McCormick (Dodging Satan: My Irish/Italian, Sometimes Awesome, But Mostly Creepy, Childhood)
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Indians are the Italians of Asia and vice versa. Every man in both countries is a singer when he is happy, and every woman is a dancer when she walks to the shop at the corner. For them, food is the music inside the body and music is the food inside the heart. Amore or Pyar makes every man a poet, a princess of peasant girl if only for second eyes of man and woman meets.
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Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)
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You have to admit that anatomically, this ear business rivals my father’s fear that a bicycle seat could ruin your virginity
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Kathleen Zamboni McCormick (Dodging Satan: My Irish/Italian, Sometimes Awesome, But Mostly Creepy, Childhood)
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they’re teaching us that the real Catholic belief about Mary is that she got pregnant through her earβ€”that β€œJust as Eve listened to Satan and gave birth to sin, so Mary listened to Gabriel and became pregnant with the Son of God.
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Kathleen Zamboni McCormick (Dodging Satan: My Irish/Italian, Sometimes Awesome, But Mostly Creepy, Childhood)
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Every last minute of my life has been preordained and I'm sick and tired of it. How this feels is I'm just another task in God's daily planner: the Italian Renaissance penciled in for right after the Dark Ages. ... The Information Age is scheduled immediately after the Industrial Revolution. Then the Postmodern Era, then the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Famine. Check. Pestilence. Check. War. Check. Death. Check. And between the big events, the earthquakes and the tidal waves, God's got me squeezed in for a cameo appearance. Then maybe in thirty years, or maybe next year, God's daily planner has me finished.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Survivor)
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So you speak French?" Isabelle sighed. "I wish I spoke another language. But Hodge never thought we needed to learn anything but ancient Greek and Latin, and nobody speaks those." "I also speak Russian and Italian. And some Romanian," Sebastian said with a modest smile. "I could teach you some phrases-" "Romanian? That's impressive," said Jace. "Not many people speak it." "Do you?" Sebastian asked with interest. "Not really," Jace said with a smile so disarming Simon knew he was lying. "My Romanian is pretty much limited to useful phrases like, 'Are these snakes poisonous?' and 'But you look much too young to be a police officer.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Glass (The Mortal Instruments, #3))
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Because Mary, a female, is so important to Catholicism, you feel that no one should be disappointed by having a girl instead of a boy, or if they are, they might just discover one day what a big mistake they made. Mary showed the world that girls shouldn’t be underestimated.
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Kathleen Zamboni McCormick (Dodging Satan: My Irish/Italian, Sometimes Awesome, But Mostly Creepy, Childhood)
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Have you any idea how much my kingdom has swollen in this past century alone, how many subdivisions I've had to open?" I opened my mouth to respond, but Hades was on a roll now. More security ghouls," he moaned. "Traffic problems at the judgment pavilion. Double overtime for the staff. I used to be a rich god, Percy Jackson. I control all the precious metals under the earth. But my expenses!" Charon wants a pay raise," I blurted, just remembering the fact. As soon as I said it, I wished I could sew up my mouth. Don't get me started on Charon!" Hades yelled. "He's been impossible ever since he discovered Italian suits! Problems everywhere, and I've got to handle all of them personally. The commute time alone from the palace to the gates is enough to drive me insane! And the dead just keep arriving. No, godling. I need no help getting subjects! I did not ask for this war.
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Rick Riordan (The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1))
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There's a wonderful old Italian joke about a poor man who goes to church every day and prays before the statue of a great saint, begging, "Dear saint-please, please, please...give me the grace to win the lottery." This lament goes on for months. Finally the exasperated staue comes to life, looks down at the begging man and says in weary disgust, "My son-please, please, please...buy a ticket." Prayer is a realtionship; half the job is mine. If I want transformation, but can't even be bothered to articulate what, exactly, I'm ainming for, how will it ever occur? Half the benefit of prayer is in the asking itself, in the offering of a clearly posed and well-considered intention. If you don't have this, all your pleas and desires are boneless, floppy, inert; they swirl at your feet in a cold fog and never lift.
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Elizabeth Gilbert
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[She] knew there were women who worked successfully out of the home. They ran businesses, created empires and managed to raise happy, healthy, well-adjusted children who went on to graduate magna cum laude from Harvard or became world-renowned concert pianists. Possibly both. These women accomplished all this while cooking gourmet meals, furnishing their homes with Italian antiques, giving clever, intelligent interviews with Money magazine and People, and maintaining a brilliant marriage with an active enviable sex life and never tipping the scale at an ounce over their ideal weight... She knew those women were out there. If she'd had a gun, she'd have hunted every last one of them down and shot them like rabid dogs for the good of womankind.
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Nora Roberts (Birthright)
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Diocesan exams are given at the end of March to students in Catholic schools throughout Massachusetts from the fourth to the twelfth grade. You have to answer four out of seven essay questions. A typical question goes something like this: Theologians speculate about whether Christ actually appeared to His disciples after He rose from the dead. Is the scripture clear on this? Discuss, with reference to the different gospels and their variations, and to different theological interpretations
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Kathleen Zamboni McCormick (Dodging Satan: My Irish/Italian, Sometimes Awesome, But Mostly Creepy, Childhood)
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It’s in English,” I call out as it comes into focus. β€œIt says β€˜Made in China.’” At first Sister Loretta thinks I must be wrong, but when she sees the words for herself, she explains to us that God anticipated that the Communists in China would create technology that makes medals, rosaries, and plastic figurines really cheaply, and He was ready to temporarily forgive them for not being a democracy and for being pagans if they were willing to sell these holy goods to us at a fantastic discount, which shows us that God, like everyone else, goes out of His way to get a good deal on something He really needs. Who doesn’t like a bargain?
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Kathleen Zamboni McCormick (Dodging Satan: My Irish/Italian, Sometimes Awesome, But Mostly Creepy, Childhood)
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The italian nanny was attempting to answer the teachers latest question when the moroccan student interupted, shouting "Excuse me, What is an easter?" it would seem that depsite having grown up in a muslim country, she would have heard it mentioned once or twice, but no. "I mean it," She said. " I have no idea what you people are talking about." The teacher called upon the rest of us to explain. The poles led the charge to the best of their ability. It is," said one, "a party for the little boy of god who call his self jesus and... oh shit." She faltered and her fellow country man came to her aid. He call his self Jesus and then he die one day on two... morsels of... lumber." The rest of the class jumped in, offering bits of information that would have given the pope an aneurysm. he die one day and then he go above of my head to live with your father." he weared of himself the long hair and after he die. the first day he come back here for to say hello to the peoples." he Nice the jesus." he make the good things, and on the easter we be sad because somebody makes him dead today.
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David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day)
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The first thing you notice about New Orleans are the burying grounds - the cemeteries - and they're a cold proposition, one of the best things there are here. Going by, you try to be as quiet as possible, better to let them sleep. Greek, Roman, sepulchres- palatial mausoleums made to order, phantomesque, signs and symbols of hidden decay - ghosts of women and men who have sinned and who've died and are now living in tombs. The past doesn't pass away so quickly here. You could be dead for a long time. The ghosts race towards the light, you can almost hear the heavy breathing spirits, all determined to get somewhere. New Orleans, unlike a lot of those places you go back to and that don't have the magic anymore, still has got it. Night can swallow you up, yet none of it touches you. Around any corner, there's a promise of something daring and ideal and things are just getting going. There's something obscenely joyful behind every door, either that or somebody crying with their head in their hands. A lazy rhythm looms in the dreamy air and the atmosphere pulsates with bygone duels, past-life romance, comrades requesting comrades to aid them in some way. You can't see it, but you know it's here. Somebody is always sinking. Everyone seems to be from some very old Southern families. Either that or a foreigner. I like the way it is. There are a lot of places I like, but I like New Orleans better. There's a thousand different angles at any moment. At any time you could run into a ritual honoring some vaguely known queen. Bluebloods, titled persons like crazy drunks, lean weakly against the walls and drag themselves through the gutter. Even they seem to have insights you might want to listen to. No action seems inappropriate here. The city is one very long poem. Gardens full of pansies, pink petunias, opiates. Flower-bedecked shrines, white myrtles, bougainvillea and purple oleander stimulate your senses, make you feel cool and clear inside. Everything in New Orleans is a good idea. Bijou temple-type cottages and lyric cathedrals side by side. Houses and mansions, structures of wild grace. Italianate, Gothic, Romanesque, Greek Revival standing in a long line in the rain. Roman Catholic art. Sweeping front porches, turrets, cast-iron balconies, colonnades- 30-foot columns, gloriously beautiful- double pitched roofs, all the architecture of the whole wide world and it doesn't move. All that and a town square where public executions took place. In New Orleans you could almost see other dimensions. There's only one day at a time here, then it's tonight and then tomorrow will be today again. Chronic melancholia hanging from the trees. You never get tired of it. After a while you start to feel like a ghost from one of the tombs, like you're in a wax museum below crimson clouds. Spirit empire. Wealthy empire. One of Napoleon's generals, Lallemaud, was said to have come here to check it out, looking for a place for his commander to seek refuge after Waterloo. He scouted around and left, said that here the devil is damned, just like everybody else, only worse. The devil comes here and sighs. New Orleans. Exquisite, old-fashioned. A great place to live vicariously. Nothing makes any difference and you never feel hurt, a great place to really hit on things. Somebody puts something in front of you here and you might as well drink it. Great place to be intimate or do nothing. A place to come and hope you'll get smart - to feed pigeons looking for handouts
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Bob Dylan (Chronicles, Volume One)
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Dearest creature in creation, Study English pronunciation. I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse. I will keep you, Suzy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Tear in eye, your dress will tear. So shall I! Oh hear my prayer. Just compare heart, beard, and heard, Dies and diet, lord and word, Sword and sward, retain and Britain. (Mind the latter, how it’s written.) Now I surely will not plague you With such words as plaque and ague. But be careful how you speak: Say break and steak, but bleak and streak; Cloven, oven, how and low, Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe. Hear me say, devoid of trickery, Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore, Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles, Exiles, similes, and reviles; Scholar, vicar, and cigar, Solar, mica, war and far; One, anemone, Balmoral, Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel; Gertrude, German, wind and mind, Scene, Melpomene, mankind. Billet does not rhyme with ballet, Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet. Blood and flood are not like food, Nor is mould like should and would. Viscous, viscount, load and broad, Toward, to forward, to reward. And your pronunciation’s OK When you correctly say croquet, Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve, Friend and fiend, alive and live. Ivy, privy, famous; clamour And enamour rhyme with hammer. River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb, Doll and roll and some and home. Stranger does not rhyme with anger, Neither does devour with clangour. Souls but foul, haunt but aunt, Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant, Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger, And then singer, ginger, linger, Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge, Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age. Query does not rhyme with very, Nor does fury sound like bury. Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth. Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath. Though the differences seem little, We say actual but victual. Refer does not rhyme with deafer. Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer. Mint, pint, senate and sedate; Dull, bull, and George ate late. Scenic, Arabic, Pacific, Science, conscience, scientific. Liberty, library, heave and heaven, Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven. We say hallowed, but allowed, People, leopard, towed, but vowed. Mark the differences, moreover, Between mover, cover, clover; Leeches, breeches, wise, precise, Chalice, but police and lice; Camel, constable, unstable, Principle, disciple, label. Petal, panel, and canal, Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal. Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair, Senator, spectator, mayor. Tour, but our and succour, four. Gas, alas, and Arkansas. Sea, idea, Korea, area, Psalm, Maria, but malaria. Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean. Doctrine, turpentine, marine. Compare alien with Italian, Dandelion and battalion. Sally with ally, yea, ye, Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key. Say aver, but ever, fever, Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver. Heron, granary, canary. Crevice and device and aerie. Face, but preface, not efface. Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass. Large, but target, gin, give, verging, Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging. Ear, but earn and wear and tear Do not rhyme with here but ere. Seven is right, but so is even, Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen, Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk, Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work. Pronunciation (think of Psyche!) Is a paling stout and spikey? Won’t it make you lose your wits, Writing groats and saying grits? It’s a dark abyss or tunnel: Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale, Islington and Isle of Wight, Housewife, verdict and indict. Finally, which rhymes with enough, Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough? Hiccough has the sound of cup. My advice is to give up!!!
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Gerard Nolst TrenitΓ© (Drop your Foreign Accent)