Mount Etna Quotes

Would that our age could now return / To those pure ways of leading life. / But now the passion to possess / Burns fiercer than Mount Etna's fire.

If I was to establish a system, it would be, that Mountains are produced by Volcanoes, and not Volcanoes by Mountains.

May not subterraneous fire be considered as the great plough (if I may be allowed the expression) which Nature makes use of to turn up the bowels of the earth?

Niccolo Machiavelli folded his arms across his chest and looked at the alchemyst. “I always knew we would meet again,” he said in French. “Though I never imagined it would be in these circumstances,” he added with a smile. “I was certain I’d get you in Paris last Saturday.” He bowed, an old-fashioned courtly gesture as Perenelle joined her husband. “Mistress Perenelle, it seems we are forever destined to meet on islands.” “The last time we met you had poisoned my husband and attempted to kill me,” Perenelle reminded him, speaking in Italian. Over three thousand years previously, the Sorceress and the Italian had fought at the foot of Mount Etna in Sicily. Although Perenelle had defeated Machiavelli, the energies they unleashed caused the ancient volcano to erupt. Lava flowed for five weeks after the battle and destroyed ten villages. “Forgive me. I was younger then, and foolish. And you emerged the victor of the encounter. I carry the scars to this day.” “Let us try and not blow up this island,” she said with a smile. Then she stretched out her hand. “I saw you try to save me earlier. There is no longer any enmity between us.” Machiavelli took her fingers in his and bent over them. “Thank you. That pleases me.

Empedocles was to die when he leapt into the crater of Mount Etna, in an attempt to prove to his followers that he was immortal. Opinion remained divided at the time, but over the years his lack of reappearance went against him.

My grandparents were Italian immigrants. My father’s father, Joseph Massimino, was from Linguaglossa, near Mount Etna in Sicily, and he came over in 1902 to New York City and ended up buying a farm upstate in a town called Warwick, which is where my father, Mario Massimino, grew up. When my dad left the farm he moved back to the city, to the Bronx, where he met my mom, Vincenza Gianferrara. Her family was from Palermo, also in Sicily, and they lived in Carroll Gardens, an

Do you see those dull stars?" She outlined the formation with her finger. "A pentagram," whispered Scott. "Yes, but not just any pentagram. Take a look through the telescope." Scott approached the eyepiece. "They're not stars!" "What do they look like?" asked Jenn. Scott studied each of the figures. "It can't be," he stuttered. "Planets?" "Exactly what I thought." "But how? They're completely off their orbits." "The earth's off its axis." "Mount Etna erupted." "Greece had a earthquake." "The whole universe has gone mad!" Scott exclaimed. "And my friends have supernatural powers," said Jenn.

Rumbling Mountains Four active volcanoes shake the southern Apennines. One of these, Mount Vesuvius, lies on the shore of the Bay of Naples. The people who lived near it two thousand years ago didn’t know it was a volcano. Then, in A.D. 79, Vesuvius suddenly blew its top and hot ash filled the sky, burying the city of Pompeii and neighboring towns. Over the centuries, Vesuvius has erupted again from time to time, often with little warning. Mount Etna, on the island of Sicily, is more than three times higher than Vesuvius. It is one of the world’s most active volcanoes, producing frequent lava flows. Italy’s other two active volcanoes, Stromboli and Vulcano, belong to a group of islands called the Aeolians, off the northern coast of Sicily. Earthquakes also strike Italy. In 1693, an estimated one hundred thousand people died in an earthquake in Sicily. The most deadly recent quake in Italy occurred near Naples in 1980. It killed three thousand people.

Although Sicily in July can be a furnace, there can be cool nights by the sea, and up in the hills of Mount Etna. I allow myself to feel a tantalizing hope we might head up there. There is something thrilling about the pull of the volcano towering over the Sicilian coastline, constantly puffing steam and fiery red ash like a sleeping dragon, while farmers and villagers quietly live and work, aware that she can wake at any moment.

mountain. “He’s toast!” said Zeus. “Typhon will never trouble us again!” But personally, I had my doubts. After what I’d just seen, I thought Typhon might find a way to escape. But to this day, he hasn’t. Nope, Typhon is still trapped under that mountain, raging and roaring. If you don’t believe me, go to Sicily yourself. Go to Mount Etna. You’ll see an enormous mountain belching smoke, fire, and molten lava. Who else could it be under there but Typhon?

Hephaestus scratched his smoldering beard. “Well, that’s where the monster Typhon is trapped, you know. Used to be under Mount Etna, but when we moved to America, his force got pinned under Mount St. Helens instead. Great source of fire, but a bit dangerous. There’s always a chance he will escape. Lots of eruptions these days, smoldering all the time. He’s restless with the Titan rebellion.” “What do you want us to do?” I said. “Fight him?” Hephaestus snorted. “That would be suicide. The gods themselves ran from Typhon when he was free. No, pray you never have to see him, much less fight him. But lately I have sensed intruders in my mountain. Someone or something is using my forges. When I go there, it is empty, but I can tell it is being used. They sense me coming, and they disappear. I send my automatons to investigate, but they do not return. Something…ancient is there. Evil. I want to know who dares invade my territory, and if they mean to lose Typhon.

You have hardly started living, and yet all is said, all is done. You are only twenty-five, but your path is already mapped out for you. The roles are prepared, and the labels: from the potty of your infancy to the bath-chair of your old age, all the seats are ready and waiting their turn. Your adventures have been so thoroughly described that the most violent revolt would not make anyone turn a hair. Step into the street and knock people's hats off, smear your head with filth, go bare-foot, publish manifestos, shoot at some passing usurper or other, but it won't make any difference: in the dormitory of the asylum your bed is already made up, your place is already laid at the table of the poètes maudits; Rimbaud's drunken boat, what a paltry wonder: Abyssinia is a fairground attraction, a package trip. Everything is arranged, everything is prepared in the minutest detail: the surges of emotion, the frosty irony, the heartbreak, the fullness, the exoticism, the great adventure, the despair. You won't sell your soul to the devil, you won't go clad in sandals to throw yourself into the crater of Mount Etna, you won't destroy the seventh wonder of the world. Everything is ready for your death: the bullet that will end your days was cast long ago, the weeping women who will follow your casket have already been appointed. Why climb to the peak of the highest hills when you would only have to come back down again, and, when you are down, how would you avoid spending the rest of your life telling the story of how you got up there? Why should you keep up the pretence of living? Why should you carry on? Don't you already know everything that will happen to you? Haven't you already been all that you were meant to be: the worthy son of your mother and father, the brave little boy scout, the good pupil who could have done better, the childhood friend, the distant cousin, the handsome soldier, the impoverished young man? Just a little more effort, not even a little more effort, just a few more years, and you will be the middle manager, the esteemed colleague. Good husband, good father, good citizen. War veteran. One by one, you will climb, like a frog, the rungs on the ladder of success. You'll be able to choose, from an extensive and varied range, the personality that best befits your aspirations, it will be carefully tailored to measure: will you be decorated? cultured? an epicure? a physician of body and soul? an animal lover? will you devote your spare time to massacring, on an out-oftune piano, innocent sonatas that never did you any harm? Or will you smoke a pipe in your rocking chair, telling yourself that, all in all, life's been good to you?

I followed them in every foreign land where they work hard, and suffer, where they sigh and if in trenches they as soldiers stand. Once they have met me they can’t say goodbye. Because the way I talk, they like to swear, brings smells of home: pistachio nuts, a hint of shelled, dry almonds, rows of prickly pears, of orange blossoms and of calamint; of our green sea where tuna boats stand ready, of relatives, of lovers, and of wives, Mount Etna, the Red Mountain, Mumpileri, and our night sky when it is clear and bright... I bring them all the passions, so they say, Sicilians harbor in their fiery hearts, those hearts that seem incapable of joy because they constantly torment themselves. For someone like myself, to the wheel tied, mean mother, is it not enough, I say, that I roam round the world without a guide and earn without much art your weekly pay? The Author Forgive me, dear Centona, I apologize! My senses were impaired when I began; What you keep giving me is a great prize I value more than some relationships with man.