Italians

“ When we visit Italy, we become what the Italians were censured for being,—enjoyers of the beauties of nature, the elegance of art, the delights of climate, the recollections of the past, and the pleasures of society, without a thought beyond. ”

“ I have now seen but two Italian cities, and for the first time, and have spoken with but few persons, and yet I know my Italians pretty well. They are like courtiers, who consider themselves the first people in the world, and who, on the strength of certain advantages, which cannot be denied them, can indulge with impunity in so comfortable a thought. The Italians appear to me a right good people. Only one must see the children and the common people as I see them now, and can see them, while I am always open to them,—nay, always lay myself open to them. ”

“ It is a double pleasure to find poetry worthy of its better days spring up in modern Italy, showing that the genius of the Italians survives the blighting influence of misrule and oppression. The more I see of the inhabitants of this country, the more I feel convinced that they are highly gifted with intellectual powers, and possess all the elements of greatness. They are made to be a free, active, inquiring people. ”

“ Long ago, even so long ago as in the time of the first great Romans of the Republic, Italians loved the shores of their land, and would flock thither from the middle countries to breathe the stronger, if not always fresher, sea-breeze, and to rest and revel in the clear waters of ebbing waves. ”

“ Italians can do nothing else in the bustling communities of foreign nations. Buttons looked with respect upon those men who thus had carried their lore for their dear Art for years through strange lands and uncongenial climes.
"If I were an Italian I too would be an organ-grinder!" ”

“ It was in the course of those five hundred years that the Italians as a modern people, separable from their Roman ancestors, were formed. At the close of this obscure passage in Italian history, their communes, the foundation of Italy's future independence, and the source of her peculiar national development, appeared in all the vigour and audacity of youth. At its close the Italian genius presented Europe with its greatest triumph of constructive ability, the Papacy. ”

“ From the Latin race, which you affect to despise. From these Italians whom you say are so inferior in development to the negro.
Italy led the modern world in almost everything which we call civilization—she is today one of the world’s most inspiring teachers, nor will her power for good be gone till the Christian religion is repudiated, the voice of music hushed, the wand of literature broken, the force of law defied, the witchery of art lost to the minds, the hearts and the souls of men. ”

“ At the end of the fifteenth century, Italy was the centre of European civilization: while the other nations were still plunged in a feudal barbarism which seems almost as far removed from all our sympathies as is the condition of some American or Polynesian savages, the Italians appear to us as possessing habits of thought, a mode of life, political, social, and literary institutions, not unlike those of to-day; as men whom we can thoroughly understand, whose ideas and aims, whose general views, resemble our own in that main, indefinable characteristic of being modern. ”

“ The Italians, who live to so great extent by the travel through their country, learn our abominable languages and minister to our detestable comfort and propriety, till we have slight chance to know them as we once could,—musical, picturesque, and full of sweet, natural knaveries, graceful falsehood, and all uncleanness. ”

“ Italian is a sweet language, and of beautiful simplicity—its literature perhaps the first in the world. The Italians!—wonderful men have sprung up in Italy. Italy is not merely famous for painters, poets, musicians, singers, and linguists—the greatest linguist the world ever saw, the late Cardinal Mezzofanti, was an Italian; but it is celebrated for men—men emphatically speaking: Columbus was an Italian, Alexander Farnese was an Italian, so was the mightiest of the mighty, Napoleon Bonaparte;—but the German language, German literature, and the Germans! ”

“ ON THE RIDICULOUS TITLES ASSUMED BY ITALIAN ACADEMIES.
The Italians are a fanciful people, who have often mixed a grain or two of pleasantry and even of folly with their wisdom. This fanciful character betrays itself in their architecture, in their poetry, in their extemporary comedy, and their Improvisatori; but an instance not yet accounted for of this national levity, appears in those denominations of exquisite absurdity given by themselves to their Academies! ”

“ The Cinquecento, as the Italians call the sixteenth century, exhibits in the arts the same disintegration and decay that we have found in the political life of Italy. Honesty, independence, genuineness fade away, and in their stead we find cleverness and effort. ”

“ Italians will continue to show a shining example to the world by reason of their gaiety and charm of character, their mental subtlety, which with time will grow less involved and more lucid in expression, by their art of life, even now not much inferior to the French, by their sensitiveness to beauty, by their capacity for enthusiastic appreciation, and by their technical genius in applied science. ”

“ It is impossible not to see that the Italians are a people of quick perceptions, lively sensibilities, and warm and kindly dispositions; but it is just as impossible not to see that they are deplorably untaught. ”

“ Time was, when travels in Italy were filled with contemptuous censures of the effeminacy of the Italians—diatribes against the vice and cowardice of the nobles—sneers at the courtly verses of the poets, who were content to celebrate a marriage or a birth among the great:—their learned men fared better, for there were always writers in Italy whose names adorned European letters—yet still contempt was the general tone ”

“ In the intervals a couple of friends or enemies stop—Italians always make their points in conversation by pulling up, letting you walk on a few paces, to turn and find them standing with finger on nose and engaging your interrogative eye—they pause, by a happy instinct, directly under my window, and dispute their point or tell their story or make their confidence. One scarce is sure which it may be; everything has such an explosive promptness, such a redundancy of inflection and action. ”

“ Why, really, the Italians have such a passion for murdering each other, ma'am, and the English such an odd delight in killing themselves, that I, who have acquired no taste for such agreeable amusements, grow somewhat impatient to return to Paris, and get a good laugh among my old acquaintance. ”

“ Such things belong to ages and stages in the race's growth. Whatever you can say of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, now, has been totally untrue of them at some other period. We think of the Italians as passionate, subtle of intellect, above all things artistic and beauty-loving. ”

“ The Italians work little, and are in no want of the necessaries, or even luxuries, of life. The English, well fed, strong and hale, happy and free, reap and enjoy undisturbed the fruits of their industry. ”

“ Among the various causes which may be assigned for this phenomenon, the most important undoubtedly is the fact that the Italians have always looked upon themselves as of one race with the ancient Romans, and the heirs of all the glorious traditions attached to the names of the heroes, poets, and artists of the Eternal City. ”

“ The truth is, that wherever men have had a chance to know the individual Italian, they have discovered that there are good Italians even as there are good Jews and good Slavs, and that there are good and bad in every race. ”

“ The Italians are sincere and faithful in the private intercourse of life. Interest and ambition exercise considerable sway among them; but pride and vanity none: the distinctions of rank produce little impression. ”

“ The Italians are delicately organised, and have intuitive taste in music and most of the fine arts; but accomplishments, as they are called, cannot be cultivated to any extent, nor can even a love of duty subsist among the idle, which the Italians proverbially are. ”

“ These old chansons de geste, however, in coming to Italy, lost much of their original significance. The spirit and ideals could scarcely be understood by the Italians, to whom feudal society was largely unknown. What they liked in the French romances was not religious or patriotic sentiments, but adventures and the wonderful deeds of the heroes. ”

“ I beg you to occupy yourself in collecting biographical notices respecting the Italians who have honestly enriched themselves in other regions, particularly referring to the obstacles of their previous life, and to the efforts and the means which they employed for vanquishing them, as well as to the advantages which they secured for themselves, for the countries in which they settled, and for the country to which they owed their birth. ”

“ It has long been the fashion among foreigners to think of Italians, particularly those of the upper class, as late-rising, easy-going, and not particularly in love with work—a sort of dolce far niente [81] people. ”

“ They only want the French to open the way. We Italians can do the rest ourselves. It is a good time to go to Italy. You will see devotion and patriotism such as you never saw before. There is no country so beloved as Italy. ”

“ I found all these people, as I have never failed to find Italians of their sort, simple, good-hearted and careless, sometimes happy, sometimes acutely miserable; but always patient and reasonable, and always expressing themselves unaffectedly, in very strong language. ”

“ The greatest jurists, ecclesiastics and statesmen of the middle ages, the interpreters of Roman law, the fabricators of solid theological edifices, the founders of the Catholic Church, the champions of the Imperial idea, were Italians, proving by their grasp of practical affairs and by the positive turn they gave to speculative inquiries, a participation in the ancient Latin Spirit. ”

“ The prevalent beauty of the Italians, co-existing though it does with a low moral state, becomes, on this hypothesis, reconcileable with the general induction; as do also many of the anomalies we see around us. ”

“ I can easily conceive that the first step is the grand difficulty; and, after all, a great deal is in our192 own imagination: but we Italians, like all southern nations, are swayed more by our imagination than by our senses; our understanding, indeed, may be said to feed upon it. Now, if you have more courage than, I confess, I possess, and can decide on taking the grand leap that will place you beyond Italy, I feel assured you will at length find peace, and become happy. ”

“ It is pleasant to record that the Italians have great faith in the honor of the English and Americans, and never hesitate to trust entire strangers, to any reasonable extent, on the strength of their being of the honest Anglo-Saxon race. ”

“ Wherever Italians were, there was apt to be a branch of one of the societies, and one could never tell where they might or might not turn up. The two Italian forecastle hands on board at that moment might be members, and might or might not have some business in hand not included in their signed articles. ”

“ It would be presumption to attempt to describe the manners of the Italians on so short an acquaintance. Suffice it to say, that we have been treated with the utmost attention; that the people are remarkably partial to our nation ”

“ The cause is easily explained. The Italians belong to the long-fingered craft, and creep into other hives, probably to look after the stores; then they begin to like the place, and they stop, joining the black people. ”

“ It is not, therefore, just to allege, that, because the Italians are a calm, persuasive, and pensive people, and the French all stir, talk, and inconstancy, they are respectively actuated by different moral causes. ”

“ There was a great number of third-rate Italians from the Lombard towns and cities, a sprinkling of inferior French, a few English, a stray American or so, and an Irish family, on their way to Italy, sojourning here rather for economy than health, and fancying that they were acquiring habits and manners that would serve them through their winter's campaign. ”

“ The Papal Physicians were not all Italians, indeed Italian as a national designation was almost unused, men were Neopolitans, Genoese, Venetians, Paduans, Bolognese, Sicilians, Milanese quite as distinctly as now they are French, English, Spanish or whatever else it may be. ”

“ It is absolutely necessary to hear the people talking together, if you would form a true and lively image of the whole country. The Italians are in the strangest manner possible rivals and adversaries of each other. Every one is strongly enthusiastic in the praise of his own town and state. ”

“ The account of the social, religious and political revolutions of the ancient and modern Italians, and the history of the rise and progress of the arts and literature in Italy, constitute two of its most valuable divisions. ”

“ So vast a foreign-born population is bound to contain elements of both strength and weakness. The north Italians are molto simpatici to the American character, and many of their national traits are singularly like our own, for they are honest, thrifty, industrious, law-abiding and good-natured. ”