Famous Quotes & Sayings

Charles Caleb Colton

Genius, when employed in works whose tendency it is to demoralize and to degrade us, should be contemplated with abhorrence rather than with admiration; such a monument of its power, may indeed be stamped with immortality, but like the Coliseum at Rome, we deplore its magnificence because we detest the purposes for which it was designed.

C. Wright Mills

America is a nation with no truly national city, no Paris, no Rome, no London, no city which is at once the social center, the political capital, and the financial hub.

William Shakespeare

Take it in what sense thou wilt.

Bernardo Bertolucci

Commuting in a wheelchair is not easy. I live in a very old part of Rome. These cobbles everywhere... terrible! In London, it is the same. Every pavement is uneven.

Edward Gibbon

The savage nations of the globe are the common enemies of civilized society; and we may inquire, with anxious curiosity, whether Europe is still threatened with a repetition of those calamities, which formerly oppressed the arms and institutions of Rome.

Edward Gibbon

Whatever evils either reason or declamation have imputed to extensive empire, the power of Rome was attended with some beneficial consequences to mankind; and the same freedom of intercourse which extended the vices, diffused likewise the improvements of social life.

Edward Gibbon

At the hour of midnight the Salerian gate was silently opened, and the inhabitants were awakened by the tremendous sound of the Gothic trumpet. Eleven hundred and sixty-three years after the foundation of Rome, the Imperial city, which had subdued and civilised so considerable a part of mankind, was delivered to the licentious fury of the tribes of Germany and Scythia.

Eddie Izzard

America is the new Roman Empire. Remember what happened to Rome.

Edward Gibbon

The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.

Charles Baudelaire

That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal; from which it follows that irregularity – that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment, are a essential part and characteristic of beauty.

Jane Austen

I am all astonishment.

Charles Darwin

Attention, if sudden and close, graduates into surprise; and this into astonishment; and this into stupefied amazement.

Eugene Ionesco

Explanation separates us from astonishment, which is the only gateway to the incomprehensible.

Cassandra Clare

He produced a handkerchief—crisply folded—and handed it to her. She took it with silent astonishment. She’d never before known anyone who carried a handkerchief.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

The only thing that should astonish us is that anything can yet astonish us.

Theodore Roethke

Live in a perpetual great astonishment.

Thaddeus Stevens

Retain, even in opposition, your capacity for astonishment.

Enid Bagnold

I shall continue to explore-the astonishment of living.