Luigi Quotes

Life is full of strange absurdities, which, strangely enough, do not even need to appear plausible, since they are true.

Whatever is a reality today, whatever you touch and believe in and that seems real for you today, is going to be, like the reality of yesterday, an illusion tomorrow.

but until then I promise to be the Mario to your Luigi, except I won't hog the spotlight.

THE FATHER: But don't you see that the whole trouble lies here? In words, words. Each one of us has within him a whole world of things, each man of us his own special world. And how can we ever come to an understanding if I put in the words I utter the sense and value of things as I see them; while you who listen to me must inevitably translate them according to the conception of things each one of you has within himself. We think we understand each other, but we never really do.

If only we could see in advance all the harm that can come from the good we think we are doing.

Imparerai a tue spese che nel lungo tragitto della vita incontrerai tante maschere e pochi volti.

The capacity for deluding ourselves that today's reality is the only true one, on the one hand, sustains us, but on the other, it plunges us into an endless void, because today's reality is destined to prove delusion for us tomorrow; and life doesn't conclude. It can't conclude. Tomorrow if it concludes, it's finished.

We all have a world of things inside ourselves and each one of us has his own private world. How can we understand each other if the words I use have the sense and the value that I expect them to have, but whoever is listening to me inevitably thinks that those same words have a different sense and value, because of the private world he has inside himself, too.

E l’amore guardò il tempo e rise, perché sapeva di non averne bisogno. Finse di morire per un giorno, e di rifiorire alla sera, senza leggi da rispettare. Si addormentò in un angolo di cuore per un tempo che non esisteva. Fuggì senza allontanarsi, ritornò senza essere partito, il tempo moriva e lui restava.

Inevitably we construct ourselves. Let me explain. I enter this house and immediately I become what I have to become, what I can become: I construct myself. That is, I present myself to you in a form suitable to the relationship I wish to achieve with you. And, of course, you do the same with me.

Our spirits have their own private way of understanding each other, of becoming intimate, while our external persons are still trapped in the commerce of ordinary words, in the slavery of social rules. Souls have their own needs and their own ambitions, which the body ignores when it sees that it's impossible to satisfy them or achieve them.

It is so.When YOU think so

Dear Nintendo, We need a new Mario game, where you rescue the princess in the first ten minutes, and for the rest of the game you try and push down that sick feeling in your stomach that she’s ‘damaged goods’, a concept detailed again and again in the profoundly sex negative instruction booklet, and when Luigi makes a crack about her and Bowser, you break his nose and immediately regret it. When Peach asks you, in the quiet of her mushroom castle bedroom ‘do you still love me?’ you pretend to be asleep. You press the A button rhythmically, to control your breath, keep it even.

You don’t appreciate the fact that madmen are very lucky.

No name. No memory today of yesterday’s name; of today’s name, tomorrow. If the name is the thing; if a name in us is the concept of every thing placed outside of us; and without a name you don’t have the concept, and the thing remains in us as if blind, indistinct and undefined: well then, let each carve this name that I bore among men, a funeral epigraph, on the brow of that image in which I appeared to him, and then leave it in peace, and let there be no more talk about it. It is fitting for the dead. For those who have concluded. I am alive and I do not conclude. Life does not conclude. And life knows nothing of names. This tree, tremulous pulse of new leaves. I am this tree. Tree, cloud; tomorrow book or wind: the book I read, the wind I drink. All outside, wandering.

I am an "unrealized" character, dramatically speaking...

KNOWLEDGE NOT SHARED REMAINS UNKNOWN. —LUIGI L. LEMONCELLO

…my real love has always been the sleep that rescued me by allowing me to dream.

For man never reasons so much and becomes so introspective as when he suffers ; since he is anxious to get at the cause of his sufferings, to learn who has produced them, and whether it is just or unjust that he should have to bear them. On the other hand, when he is happy, he takes his happiness as it comes and doesn't analyse it, just as if happiness were his right.

If there's any interaction between genes and languages, it is often languages that influence genes, since linguistic differences between populations lessen the chance of genetic exchange between them.

Do you recognize perhaps, also you, now, that a minute ago you were another?

When a character is born, he acquires at once such an independence, even of his own author, that he can be imagined by everybody even in many other situations where the author never dreamed of placing him; and so he acquires for himself a meaning which the author never thought of giving him.

Le anime hanno un loro particolar modo d'intendersi, d'entrare in intimità, fino a darsi del tu, mentre le nostre persone sono tuttavia impacciate nel commercio delle parole comuni, nella schiavitù delle esigenze sociali. Han bisogni lor proprii e le loro proprie aspirazioni le anime, di cui il corpo non si dà per inteso, quando veda l'impossibilità di soddisfarli e di tradurle in atto. E ogni qualvolta due che comunichino fra loro così, con le anime soltanto, si trovano soli in qualche luogo, provano un turbamento angoscioso e quasi una repulsione violenta d'ogni minimo contatto materiale, una sofferenza che li allontana, e che cessa subito, non appena un terzo intervenga. Allora, passata l'angoscia, le due anime sollevate si ricercano e tornano a sorridersi da lontano.

I present myself to you in a form suitable to the relationship I wish to achieve to you.

This is the real drama for me; the belief that we all, you see, think of ourselves as one single person: but it's not true: each of us is several different people, and all these people live inside us. With one person we seem like this and with another we seem very different. But we always have the illusion of being the same person for everybody and of always being the same person in everything we do. But it's not true! It's not true! We find this out for ourselves very clearly when by some terrible chance we're suddenly stopped in the middle of doing something and we're left dangling there, suspended. We realize then, that every part of us was not involved in what we'd been doing and that it would be a dreadful injustice of other people to judge us only by this one action as we dangle there, hanging in chains, fixed for all eternity, as if the whole of one's personality were summed up in that single, interrupted action.

Io sono vivo e non concludo.La vita non conclude.E non sa di nomi, la vita. Quest’albero, respiro tremulo di foglie nuove. Sono quest’albero. Albero, nuvola; domani libro o vento: il libro che leggo, il vento che bevo. Tutto fuori, vagabondo.

When the characters are really alive before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in their action, in their words, in the situations which they suggest to him.

And no one realizes we should all, always, look like that, each with his eyes full of horror at his own, inescapable solitude.

The idea that others saw in me one that was not the I whom I knew, one whom they alone could know, as they looked at me from without, with eyes that were not my own, eyes that conferred upon me an aspect destined to remain always foreign to me, although it was one that was in me, one that was my own to them (a "mine," that is to say, that was not for me!)—a life into which, although it was my own, I had no power to penetrate—this idea gave me no rest.

There's no greater show on earth than observing human nature

Un'ora breve di dolore c'impressiona lungamente; un giorno passa e non lascia traccia.

And the air is new. And everything, instant by instant, is as it is, preparing to appear. [...] This is the only way I can live now. To be reborn moment by moment. [...] I die at every instant, and I am reborn, new and without memories: live and whole, no longer inside myself, but in every thing outside.

But only in order to know if you, as you really are now, see yourself as you once were with all the illusions that were yours then, with all the things both inside and outside of you as they seemed to you - as they were then indeed for you. Well, sir, if you think of all those illusions that mean nothing to you now, of all those things which don't even seem to you to exist any more, while once they were for you, don't you feel that - I won't say these boards - but the very earth under your feet is sinking away from you when you reflect that in the same way this you as you feel it today - all this present reality of yours - is fated to seem a mere illusion to you tomorrow?

Curiously I was unmoved by my work. Unaffected by the act of murder, I had become entirely numb. I couldn't understand how such detachment was possible-- but I did some digging. What I discovered would have horrified me... if I was capable of being horrified. My augmentation had included the binding of my DNA to some of history's most notorious assassins. Are you not getting this? I'll say it in plain English--- I am the perfect killer in every sense of the word--- ---because--- ---I--- ---am--- ---every--- killer. I'm the act of change possessed in a revolver. I am revolution packed into a suitcase bomb. I am ever Mark David Chapman and every Charlotte Corday. I am Luigi Lucheni slow-dancing with Balthasar to the tune of semi-automatics, while Gavrilo Princip masturbates in the corner with bath-tub napalm. I am all of them and so much more... because I am going to live forever." Number Five

La solitudine non è mai con voi; è sempre senza di voi, e soltanto possibile con un estraneo attorno: luogo o persona che sia, che del tutto vi ignorino, che del tutto voi ignoriate, così che la vostra volontà e il vostro sentimento restino sospesi e smarriti in un’incertezza angosciosa e, cessando ogni affermazione di voi, cessi l’intimità stessa della vostra coscienza. La vera solitudine è in un luogo che vive per sé e che per voi non ha traccia né voce, e dove dunque l’estraneo siete voi

Have you ever thought to go away and never come back? Run away and lose your tracks, to go to a place far away and start living again, living a new life, only yours, really live? Did you ever think?

The man, the writer, the instrument of the creation will die, but his creation does not die.

La vera solitudine è in un luogo che vive per sé e che per voi non ha traccia né voce, e dove dunque l’estraneo siete voi.

We are bound to expire Even metal which is sturdiest, Rusts. Even oxygen, the breath of life, Soon transpires. 8/6/11 -Luis Medina

prometo ser para ti lo que Super Mario es para su compinche Luigi,

The unfortunate part is that you, my dear friend, will never know, and I shall never be able to tell you, how what you say to me is translated inside me. You did not speak Turkish, no. We both employed, you and I, the same language, the same words. But is it our fault, yours and mine, if words in themselves are empty? Empty, my dear friend. You fill them with your meaning, as you speak them to me; while I, in taking them in, inevitably fill them with my own. We thought we understood each other; we did not understand each other at all.

I wanted to be alone in an altogether unusual way, a new way. Quite the contrary of what you think: that is to say, without myself and, to be precise, with a stranger at hand.

Ma che colpa abbiamo, io e voi, se le parole, per sè, sono vuote?...E voi le riempite del senso vostro, nel dirmele, e io nell'accoglierle, inevitabilmente, le riempio del senso mio. Abbiamo creduto d'intenderci, non ci siamo intesi affatto.

What is the stage? It's a place, baby, you know, where people play at being serious, a place where they act comedies. We've got to act a comedy now, dead serious.

Lessi così di tutto un po', disordinatamente; ma libri, in ispecie, di filosofia. Pesano tanto: eppure, chi se ne ciba e se li mette in corpo, vive tra le nuvole.

Thus, sir, you see when faith is lacking, it becomes impossible to create certain states of happiness, for we lack the necessary humility. Vaingloriously, we try to substitute ourselves for this faith, creating thus for the rest of the world a reality which we believe after their fashion, while, actually, it doesn't exist.

My dear fellow " Said Albert, turning to Franz " here is an admirable adventure; we will fill our carriage with pistols, blunderbusses, and double-barreled shotguns. Luigi Vampa comes to take us, and we take him - we bring him back to Rome , and present him to him holiness the Pope, who asks how he can repay so great a service; Then we merely ask for a cariage and a pair of horses, and we will see the Carnival in the carriage , and doubtless the Roman people will crown us at the capitol , and proclaim us, like Curtius and the veiled Horatius, the preservers of there country." Whilst Albert proposed this scheme, signor Pastrini's face assumed an expression impossible to describe.

Xav sprinkled olive oil on his lettuce. 'Lola was very particular that it all had to fit properly.' 'Lola?' squeaked Diamond. I wanted to warn her not to rise to the bait Xav was dangling in front of her but it was too late. Xav added some Parmesan and pepper. 'Suspicious, Diamond? You should be. This is a bachelor party I'm organizing, not a school outing, and it is going to tick all of Trace's boxes. Lola is either a very efficient water sports instructor or an exotic dancing girl; I'll leave it your imagination.' I rolled my eyes at Diamond. 'Myabe she's both. I mean the guys will really go for that, I guess. Don't worry,Di, Luigi and his crew will not disappoint us girls.' Luigi was in fact Contessa Nicoletta's little bespectacled chef with whom I had been consulting about the menu for Friday, but the Benedicts weren't to know that. 'He has promised to provide something suitably spicy for our tastes.

Una realtà non ci fu data e non c'è, dobbiamo farcela noi: non sarà mai una per tutti e per sempre ma di continuo e infinitamente mutabile.

Life is hunger, thirst, and passion for an ultimate object, which looms over the horizon, and yet always lies beyond it. When this is recognized, man becomes a tireless searcher.

Every true man, sir, who is a little above the level of the beasts and plants does not live for the sake of living, without knowing how to live; but he lives so as to give a meaning and a value of his own to life.

The radiance of which he speaks is the scholastic quidditas, the whatness of a thing. The supreme quality is felt by the artist when the esthetic image is first conceived in his imagination. The mind in that mysterious instant Shelley likened beautifully to a fading coal. The instant wherein that supreme quality of beauty, the clear radiance of the esthetic image, is apprehended luminously by the mind which has been arrested by its wholeness and fascinated by its harmony is the luminous silent stasis of esthetic pleasure, a spiritual state very like to that cardiac condition which the Italian physiologist, Luigi Galvani, using a phrase almost as beautiful as Shelley’s, called the enchantment of the heart.

In his madness he became a terrifying actor!

Io non potevo vedermi vivere

Abbiamo tutti dentro un mondo di cose: ciascuno un suo mondo di cose! E come possiamo intenderci, signore, se nelle parole ch'io dico metto il senso e il valore delle cose come sono dentro di me; mentre chi le ascolta, inevitabilmente le assume col senso e col valore che hanno per sé, del mondo com'egli l'ha dentro? Crediamo di intenderci; non ci intendiamo mai!

Tutti i fenomeni o sono illusori o la ragione di essi ci sfugge, inesplicabile. Manca affatto alla nostra conoscenza del mondo e di noi stessi quel valore obiettivo che comunemente presumiamo di attribuirle. È una costruzione illusoria continua.

Ah, to be no longer conscious of being, like a stone, like a plant! To remember no longer even one's own name! Stretched out upon the grass, hands interlaced at the back of one's neck, to look up at the dazzling, sun-puffed clouds as they sail past in the blue sky, to listen to the wind which makes, up there in the chestnut grove, a sound like the breaking of the sea.

We all grasp on to a single idea of ourselves, the way aging people dye their hair. It’s no matter that this dye doesn’t fool you. My lady, you don’t dye your hair to decieve other people, or to fool yourself, but rather to cheat your image in your mirror a little.

Fate, fortune, chance: all snares of life. You want to be, eh? There’s this catch: in abstract, you cannot just be. The being must be trapped in a form, and for some time it has to stay in it, here or there, this way or that. And everything, as long as it lasts, bears the penalty of its form, the penalty of being this way and no longer being able to be otherwise.

وقتی شخصیتی آفریده می شود، بلافاصله از نویسنده خود فاصله می گیرد، مستقل می شود. بقیه می توانند او را در موقعیت های دیگری ببینند که نویسنده به فکرش نرسیده است. و در نتیجه "معنی" دیگری بدان داده می شود که نویسنده هرگز به عقلش نرسیده بوده است.

As it grows ever more complicated today, musical art seeks out combinations more dissonant, stranger, and harsher for the ear. Thus, it comes ever closer to the noise-sound.

La solitudine non è mai con voi; è sempre senza di voi, è soltanto possibile con un estraneo attorno:

Se si guarda negli occhi un animale tutti i sistemi filosofici crollano.

-In cuor di donna quanto dura amore? (Ore) -Ed ella non mi amò quant'io l'amai? (Mai) -Or chi sei tu sì ti lagni meco? (Eco)

Remember Luigi, Toaster Toast Toast." - Mario Hotel "Remember Luigi, Where There Fire, There's Burnt Toast." - Mario Hotel "Greetings Young Traveller, I See That You Have Wandered Into My Store. Would You Like To Partake In One Of My Goods Or Services, I Sell Clothes, Rope, Bombs, You Want It I Got It, As Long As You Have Enough Rupees. Oh, I See You Don't Have Enough Ruppees, Come Back When You're A Bit, Umm, Riche." - The Legend Of Zelda

أن مأساتى فى الاحساس بأنى ، وبأن كلا منا يرى و يعتقد أنه واحد فقط ، ولكن هذا ليس صحيحا. أن كل واحد منا له شخصيات متعددة بعدد الامكانيات التى تكمن فينا : فبالنسبة للبعض يكون كل منا شخصاواحدا ، و بالنسبة للاخرين يكون شخصا مختلفا تماما ، ونحن دائما نتوهم أننا شخص واحد بالنسبة للجميع ، و هذا الشخص دائما لا يتغير ، إننا نعتقد أن هذا الشخص يظل كما هو عندما يفعل أى شىء ، و لكن هذا ليس صحيحا على الاطلاق

Voi credete di conoscervi se non vi costruite in qualche modo? E ch'io possa conoscervi, se non vi costruisco a modo mio? E voi me, se non mi costruite a modo vostro? Possiamo conoscere soltanto quello a cui riusciamo a dar forma. Ma che conoscenza può essere? È forse questa forma la cosa stessa? Sì, tanto per me, quanto per voi; ma non così per me quanto per voi: tanto vero che io non mi riconosco nella forma che mi date voi, né voi in quella che vi do io.

إذ انطفأ فجأة ،دون ان يعرف كيف و لماذا انطفأ ذلك الحماس الذي سانده و دفعه الى الامام سعيدا واثقا من نفسه .. انهارت تلك الثقة و انهار معها تلك المشاريع التي دعمها و اقامها بفن و طرق لم يعد يفهمها هو نفسه.. وهكذا بين يوم و اخر تغير كل شئ، واظلم في عينيه مظهر الناس و الاشياء ووجد نفسه فجأه تجاه ذات اخرى لا يعرفها مطلقا ، في عالم يكتشفه بذلك الذهول الذي يعتري اولئك الذين يعيشون وسط ضجيج الآلات حين تتوقف فجأه و يسود السكون ..

To dance, put your hand on your heart and listen to the sound of your soul.

Because evil, my dear child, can be done to anyone and by everyone, but good can only be done to those who need it.

For man never reasons so much and becomes so introspective as when he suffers;

Anyone can be heroic from time to time, but a gentleman is something which you have to be all the time. Which isn’t easy.

Ebbene signor Meis, il destino di Roma è l’identico. I papi ne avevano fatto – a modo loro, s’intende – un’acquasantiera; noi italiani ne abbiamo fatto, a modo nostro, un portacenere.

DON Luigi Giussani used to quote this example from Bruce Marshall’s novel To Every Man a Penny. The protagonist of the novel, the abbot Father Gaston, needs to hear the confession of a young German soldier whom the French partisans are about to sentence to death. The soldier confesses his love of women and the numerous amorous adventures he has had. The young priest explains that he has to repent to obtain forgiveness and absolution. The soldier answers, “How can I repent? It was something that I enjoyed, and if I had the chance I would do it again, even now. How can I repent?” Father Gaston, who wants to absolve the man who has been marked by destiny and who’s about to die, has a stroke of inspiration and asks, “But are you sorry that you are not sorry?” The young man answers impulsively, “Yes, I am sorry that I am not sorry.” In other words, he apologizes for not repenting. The door was opened just a crack, allowing absolution to come in….

Why are you so anxious to destroy in the name of a vulgar, commonplace sense of truth, this reality which comes to birth attracted and formed by the magic of the stage itself, which has indeed more right to live here than you, since it is much truer than you -- if you don't mind my saying so?

Is it possible that the Pentateuch could not have been written by uninspired men? that the assistance of God was necessary to produce these books? Is it possible that Galilei ascertained the mechanical principles of 'Virtual Velocity,' the laws of falling bodies and of all motion; that Copernicus ascertained the true position of the earth and accounted for all celestial phenomena; that Kepler discovered his three laws—discoveries of such importance that the 8th of May, 1618, may be called the birth-day of modern science; that Newton gave to the world the Method of Fluxions, the Theory of Universal Gravitation, and the Decomposition of Light; that Euclid, Cavalieri, Descartes, and Leibniz, almost completed the science of mathematics; that all the discoveries in optics, hydrostatics, pneumatics and chemistry, the experiments, discoveries, and inventions of Galvani, Volta, Franklin and Morse, of Trevithick, Watt and Fulton and of all the pioneers of progress—that all this was accomplished by uninspired men, while the writer of the Pentateuch was directed and inspired by an infinite God? Is it possible that the codes of China, India, Egypt, Greece and Rome were made by man, and that the laws recorded in the Pentateuch were alone given by God? Is it possible that Æschylus and Shakespeare, Burns, and Beranger, Goethe and Schiller, and all the poets of the world, and all their wondrous tragedies and songs are but the work of men, while no intelligence except the infinite God could be the author of the Pentateuch? Is it possible that of all the books that crowd the libraries of the world, the books of science, fiction, history and song, that all save only one, have been produced by man? Is it possible that of all these, the bible only is the work of God?

Era proprio la mia quell’immagine intravista in un lampo? Sono proprio così io, di fuori, quando vivendo - non mi penso? Dunque per gli altri sono quell’estraneo sospeso nello specchio: quello, e non già quale io mi conosco: quell’uno lì che io stesso prima, scorgendolo, non ho riconosciuto. Sono quell’estraneo che non posso veder vivere se non così, in un attimo impensato. Un estraneo che possono vedere e conoscere solamente gli altri, e io no.

Un personaggio, signore, può sempre domandare a un uomo chi è. Perché un personaggio ha veramente una vita sua, segnata di caratteri suoi, per cui è sempre «qualcuno». Mentre un uomo – non dico lei, adesso – un uomo così in genere, può non essere «nessuno».

Solitude is never where you are; it is always where you are not, and is only possible with a stranger present; whatever the place or whoever the person, it must be one that is wholly ignorant concerning you, and concerning which or whom you are equally ignorant, so that will and sensation remain suspended and confused in an anxious uncertainty, while with the ceasing of all affirmation on your part, your own inner consciousness ceases at the same time. True solitude is to be found in a place that lives a life of its own, but which for you holds no familiar footprint, speaks in no known voice, and where accordingly the stranger is yourself.

Was it really my own, that image glimpsed in a flash? Am I really like that, from the outside, when—all the while living—I do not think of myself? For others, then, I am that stranger whom I surprised in a mirror; I am he and not the I whom I know; I am that one there whom I myself at first, upon becoming aware of him, did not recognize. I am that stranger whom I am unable to see living except like that, in a thoughtless second. A stranger whom others alone can see and know, not I.

You don't know what it means to live the life that you could have lived, if an event over which you have no control, an unforeseeable circumstance, had not distracted and diverted you, and at times crushed you, as has happened to me.

وقضيتي كانت أفدح. فأنا لا أرى ما مات فيّ. ولكني أرى أني لم أعش أبداً. أرى أن القالب الذي أفرغت فيه حياتي، إنما أعطاه لها الآخرون، ولست أنا الذي صغتها فيه، فأنا أشعر أن حياة هذا القالب، لم تكن حياتي الحقيقية. لقد أخذوني كأية مادة، أخذوا دماغاً وروحاً وعضلات وأعصاباً ولحماً، وعجنوها على النحو الذي يريدونه حتى تنجز أعمالاً، وتقوم بأفعال، وتطيع الواجبات التي أبحث عن نفسي فيها فلا أجدها. وأصرخ، وتصرخ روحي في هذه الهيئة الميتة التي لم تكن هيئتي أبداً. ولكن كيف، وفي نفسي سأم وحقد ورعب من هذا الرجل الذي لم أكنه. من هذا القالب المميت الذي يقيدني فلا أقدر على التحرر. إنه قالب مثقل بالواجبات التي أشعر أنها ليست واجباتي. مرهق بأعمال لا تهمني، متخذ كرمز للتقدير الذي لا أعرف ما أصنع به. إن هذه الواجبات والأعمال والتقدير والإحترام صور خارجة عن حقيقة نفسي، إنها أشياء ميتة، لا معنى لها، إلا أن تثقل كاهلي، وترهقني وتسحقني، ولا تدع لي الفرصة للتنفس. أتحرر؟؟ ولكن متى استطاع إنسان إلغاء الحقيقة الواقعة فينكر الموت عندما يأخذ بخناقه .. والحقيقة أنه مهما كان مسلكك في الحياة فلا بد أن تقيدك المحن التي يجرها عليك. وتحيط بك تلك المسؤولية التي أخذتها على عاتقك كنها الجو الخانق الكثيف. فكيف أستطيع التحرر، وأنا سجين هذا القالب الغريب الذي يمثلني كما أنا بالنسبة للجميع، وكما يعرفني ويحترمني الجميع؟ إنني أعيش حياة مختلفة عن تلك الحقيقة التي أحلم بها. إنني أعيش حياتي في قالب أشعر أنه ميت وهو يعيش من أجل الآخرين. من أجل الذين رفعوه والذين يريدون له هذه الصورة .. فهو مرغم إذاً على أن يعمل من أجل زوجتي وأطفالي والمجتمع والسادة طلاب الحقوق في الجامعة والسادة العملاء الذين أودعوني الحياة والشرف والحرية والثروة. يعمل هكذا ولا أستطيع تغييره ولا أستطيع أن أركله بالأقدام وأزيحه وأتمرد عليه وأنتقم منه.

One gives way to the temptation, only to rise from it again, afterwards, with a great eagerness to reestablish one's dignity, as if it were a tombstone to place on the grave of one's shame, and a monument to hide and sign the memory of our weaknesses. Everybody's in the same case. Some folks haven't the courage to say certain things, that's all! THE STEP-DAUGHTER: All appear to have the courage to do them though.

che c'entra questo con le stelle? What has this to do with the stars?

Nati vivi, volevano vivere.

We want to live. THE MANAGER (ironically). For Eternity? THE FATHER No, sir, only for a moment... in you.

Siamo o non siamo su un’invisibile trottolina, cui fa da ferza un fil di sole, su un granellino di sabbia impazzito che gira e gira e gira, senza saper perché, senza pervenir mai a destino, come se ci provasse gusto a girar così, per farci sentire ora un po’ più di caldo, ora un po’ più di freddo, e per farci morire – spesso con la coscienza d’aver commesso una sequela di piccole sciocchezze – dopo cinquanta o sessanta giri?

Tu non le sai, povero ubriaco filosofo, queste cose; non ti passano neppure per la mente. Ma la causa vera di tutti i nostri mali, di questa tristezza nostra, sai qual è? La democrazia, mio caro, la democrazia, cioè il governo della maggioranza. Perché quando il potere è in mano d’uno solo, quest’uno sa d’essere uno e di dover contentare molti; ma quando i molti governano, pensano soltanto a contentar se stessi, e si ha allora la tirannia più balorda e più odiosa: la tirannia mascherata da libertà.

Nowhere! It is merely to show you that one is born to life in many forms, in many shapes, as tree, or as stone, as water, as butterfly, or as woman. So one may also be born a character in a play.

Each one of us has within him a whole world of things, each man of us his own special world. And how can we ever come to an understanding if I put in the words I utter the sense and value of things as I see them; while you who listen to me must inevitably translate them according to the conception of things each one of you has within himself. We think we understand each other, but we never really do.

We get paid to hang out in this beautiful court! Four puppets on a string, just like those two up there (pointing to the two hanging puppets), waiting for someone to jerk them into life and make them talk.

Everyone will recognize that each sound carries with it a tangle of sensations, already well-known and exhausted, which predispose the listener to boredom, in spite of the efforts of all musical innovators.

ولكن ألا ترين أن علةالبلاء فى الكلام ، كل واحد منا لديه عالم كامل فى نفسه ، و كل واحد منا له عالمه الخاص ! فكيف يفهم بعضنا بعضا أيها السادة إذا كنت أضع فى كلماتى التى أقولها معانى و قيم الأشياء كما أفهمها فى عالمى أنا ، بينما يفترض من يستمع إلى إن كلماتى لها المعانى و القيم الخاصة بعالمه هو ، نحن نظن أننا سوف نتقابل ، و الواقع أننا لن نتقابل أبدا !

Perché trovarsi davanti a un pazzo sapete che significa? Trovarsi davanti a uno che vi scrolla dalle fondamenta tutto quanto avete costruito in voi, attorno a voi, la logica, la logica di tutte le vostre costruzioni! - Eh! Che volete? Costruiscono senza logica, beati loro, i pazzi! O con una loro logica che vola come una piuma!

Are we or are we not on an invisible spinning top, whipped by a thread of sunlight, on a grain of crazed sand which turns and turns without ever knowing why, without ever reaching a destination, as if it enjoyed turning like that, to make us feel a little colder or warmer, and make us die (often feeling that we have merely carried out a series of meaningless gestures) after fifty or sixty years?

Quando vi dicevo che non ho mai lavorato presso un fotografo professionista, vediamo che, certo, questa potrebbe essere una limitazione: infatti, tecnicamente, ci sono fotografi professionali assolutamente strepitosi, davanti ai quali io mi levo tanto di cappello. Però l'uso delle luci, di banchi ottici, di spot, di flash, è molto convenzionale. Lavorare sul campo, lavorare all'interno del mondo, per strada, fotografare le architetture, sviluppa una sensibilità, un'attenzione nei confronti della luce che un fotografo di studio non avrà mai. Proprio perché lui ha il controllo delle luci, mentre io non ho il controllo della luce, anzi, ce l'ho, ma l'ho raggiunto attraverso una pratica diversa. Acquisisco una sensibilità nei confronti della luce. E questa, detta così, può apparire una differenza sottile, ma è fondamentale.

Ogni oggetto in noi suol trasformarsi secondo le immagini ch’esso evoca e aggruppa, per così dire, attorno a sé. Certo un oggetto può piacere anche per se stesso, per la diversità delle sensazioni gradevoli che ci suscita in una percezione armoniosa; ma ben più spesso il piacere che un oggetto ci procura non si trova nell’oggetto per sé medesimo. La fantasia lo abbellisce cingendolo e quasi irraggiandolo d’immagini care. Né noi lo percepiamo più qual esso è, ma così, quasi animato dalle immagini che suscita in noi o che le nostre abitudini vi associano. Nell’oggetto, insomma, noi amiamo quel che vi mettiamo di noi, l’accordo, l’armonia che stabiliamo tra esso e noi, l’anima che esso acquista per noi soltanto e che è formata dai nostri ricordi.

Porque la vida, por todas sus descaradas absurdidades, pequeñas y grandes, de que está felizmente llena, tiene el inestimable privilegio de poder prescindir de esta estupidísima verosimilitud, a la que el arte cree su deber prestar obediencia. Las absurdidades de la vida no tienen necesidad de parecer verosímiles, porque son verdaderas. Al contrario de las del arte, que, para parecer verdaderas, tienen necesidad de ser verosímiles. Y entonces, al ser verosímiles, ya no son absurdidades.

Parlammo dei vari reparti che c’erano in giro. Simeone pareva sollecito e conciliante. «C’è posto anche per i badogliani» disse a un certo punto. «Il posto c’è» dissi io; «ma dove sono i badogliani?» «No» disse lui. «I badogliani che dico io siete voi.» «Tanti saluti» disse Enrico: «firmato Badoglio»; e si avviò con Dante per tornare al campo. L’uomo disse che doveva andare anche lui per le sue strade, ma io gli dissi: «Aspetta un momento», e mi misi a polemizzare con una certa foga. «Stammi bene a sentire» gli dissi. «Noi non siamo badogliani, anzi siamo nemici personali di Badoglio. Badoglio è una carogna.» Gli spiegai ben bene le mie vedute sul maresciallo e sui suoi colleghi, inoltre sul Re Imperatore e sul Principe di Piemonte; aggiunsi un appendice sui principini. «Dunque,» conclusi «se voi mettete fuori la chiacchiera che noi siamo badogliani, noi diremo che voi siete troskisti. Lo sai chi era Trotzki?» «Era una carogna» disse Simeone. «Sbagliato» dissi. «Era il creatore dell’Armata Rossa, il più bravo dei compagni di Lenin; era bravo più o meno come Lenin, e ancora più brillante.» «Non sarete mica troskisti?» disse Simeone. «Ma sì» dissi; «l’ala troskista dei badogliani.» «Dimmelo tu cosa siete» disse lui; io fui tentato di dirgli: deviazionisti crociani di sinistra, ma poi gli dissi brevemente che eravamo studenti, e con chi eravamo lì, e perché.

That drawer was full of photographs of her. She showed me any number, old and recent. "All dead," I told her. She turned her head and glanced at me quickly: "Dead?" "Yes, for all they appear to be alive." "Even this one with the smile?" "Yes. And this pensive one: and the one with the eyes drooped." "But how can they be dead, if I here am alive?" "Ah, you, yes; because you do not see yourself now. But when you are in front of a mirror, the moment you look at yourself again, you are no longer alive." "And why not?" "Because, in order to behold yourself, you must for a moment halt life within you. Excuse me, but seeing that you go to the photographer's so often—when the photographer, in front of you with his camera, tells you to be sure not to move, you must have noticed—life is suspended in you—and you feel that such suspension cannot last more than a second—it is like turning into a statue—For life is constant motion, and one can never really see one's self." "You mean to say that I, while living, have never seen myself?" "Never; not as I can see you. But I see a likeness of you that is mine and mine alone; it is assuredly not yours. You, while living, have possibly been able to catch no more than a bare glimpse of your own in some snapshot or other that has been made of you; and it has come as an unpleasant surprise; it may even have pained you to recognize yourself, in helter-skelter motion like that." "That's true." "For you can only know yourself when you strike an attitude: a statue: not alive. When one is alive, one lives and does not see himself. To know one's self is to die. The reason you spend so much time looking at yourself in that mirror, in all mirrors, is that you are not alive; you do not know how to live, you cannot or you do not want to live. You want too much to know yourself; and meanwhile, you are not living." "Why, nothing of the sort! I never can succeed in keeping still a moment." "But you want to see yourself always. In every act of your life. It is as if you had before you always the likeness of yourself, in every action, in every gesture. It is from this that your intolerance comes. You do not want the feeling in you to be blind. You compel it to open its eyes and look at itself in a mirror which you are forever holding up in front of it. And feeling, the moment it sees itself, turns ice within you. You cannot go on living before a mirror. One's aim should be never to see one's self. For the reason that, however much you may try, you can never know yourself as others see you. And of what use is it, then, to know one's self for one's self's sake? You may even come to the point where you will no longer be able to understand why you must have that likeness which the mirror gives you back.