Giovanni Quotes & Sayings

No-thing less splendid than a golden sepulchre would have suited so noble a heart. — Giovanni Boccaccio

All papas and mammas have exactly that sort of sight which distinguishes objects at a distance clearly, while they need spectacles to see those under their very noses. — Giovanni Ruffini

I am proud of the hip hop generation. They are good business people and, actually, good people. — Nikki Giovanni

Don Giovanni, you invited me to sup with you: I have come. — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

To be a good reporter, writing about war, you have to write about the people. It's not about the tanks or the RPGs or military strategy. It's always about the effect war has on civilians, on society, and how it disrupts and destroys lives. — Janine Di Giovanni

Although love dwells in gorgeous palaces, and sumptuous apartments, more willingly than in miserable and desolate cottages, it cannot be denied but that he sometimes causes his power to be felt in the gloomy recesses of forests, among the most bleak and rugged mountains, and in the dreary caves of a desert. — Giovanni Boccaccio

Even as a small child, I wondered why the Dominican nuns who educated me were subservient to the Jesuit priests who educated my brothers. — Janine Di Giovanni

I grew up with Scientology - my parents at one point were clerical. It's a pragmatic philosophy, not merely a belief system. Yeah, it's had media exposure because certain luminaries do Scientology, but millions of people do it who are not celebrities. It's not a threat or some cult. — Giovanni Ribisi

But, when the work was finished, the Craftsman kept wishing that there were someone to ponder the plan of so great a work, to love its beauty, and to wonder at its vastness. — Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola

Grant me Love implies
not desire but
Commitment
Commitment accepts Challenge
Challenge embraces Theory
And you and I will get Reason: A way to explore
past actions
and
future dreams — Nikki Giovanni

Admittedly great though these reasons be, they are not the principal grounds, that is, those which may rightfully claim for themselves the privilege of the highest admiration. — Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola

I used to go up to her house. She lived upstate [in New York] and I lived in Manhattan; you're living in a lot of noise and my career was being built. For me to spend time with Nina [Simone] is to spend a lot of quiet time. — Nikki Giovanni

I know that our efforts all come to nothing. I know the end of us all is nothing, I know that at the end of Time, the reward of our toil will be nothing - and again nothing. I know that all our handiwork will be destroyed. I know that not even ash will be left from the fires that consume us. I know that our ideals, even those we achieve, will vanish in the eternal darkness of oblivion and final non-being. There is no hope, none, in my heart. No promise, none, can I make to myself and to others. No recompense can I expect for my labors. No fruit will be born of my thoughts. The Future - eternal seducer of all men, eternal cause of all effects - offers me nothing but the blank prospect of annihilation. — Giovanni Papini

I see so many people get so wrapped up in wanting to get a bigger SUV or a bigger house. But then I think, 'My God, I could have been born a woman in the Congo.' — Janine Di Giovanni

We can't behave like crocodiles and cry over spilled milk and broken eggs. — Giovanni Trapattoni

Everything starts with writing. I heard Nikki Giovanni and was blown away. I just thought 'wow'; she was writing from a black girl's perspective, and the imagery was so vivid that I started doing spoken word. — Jill Scott

Full disclosure: I went to university as an eager young feminist for many reasons - to get away from my parents, to soak up literature and knowledge, to cease being a child, to expand my mind and my world. — Janine Di Giovanni

They didn't understand, for we were Shakespeare, and they were mere actors in the play. — Cassandra Giovanni

The job of the architect becomes more difficult in this secular age. Where once he had a god to extol, he now has humans like himself; where once he had "he," he now has "she" and "they. — Nikki Giovanni

Later, in describing its narrow escape, the creature credited doubly good luck in having mimicked the shape of a harmless doll and the fact that the paranormal investigators had been looking for a hump-free boggart. 3. — Giovanni Valentino

I'm wrong for you. I'm an irresponsible player. I don't know how to be in love. I don't want to hurt you anymore than I have to. But I can't lose you. Don't walk away from me — Cassandra Giovanni

In the affairs of this world, poverty alone is without envy. — Giovanni Boccaccio

In the immediate postwar years, the whole of Europe was in a recession. So first of all, it helped us step out of a recession; it gave a certain amount of speed to the economy. But that was the first step. — Giovanni Agnelli

Giovanni had awakened an itch, had released a gnaw in me. I realized it one afternoon, when I was taking him to work via the Boulevard Montparnasse. We had bought a kilo of cherries and we were eating them as we walked along. We were both insufferably childish and high-spirited that afternoon and the spectacle we presented, two grown men jostling each other on the wide sidewalk and aiming the cherry pits, as though they were spitballs, into each other's faces, must have been outrageous. And I realized that such childishness was fantastic at my age and the happiness out of which it sprang yet more so; for that moment I really loved Giovanni, who had never seemed more beautiful than he was that afternoon. — James Baldwin

People tend to believe the bad rather than the good. — Giovanni Boccaccio

I kissed him and let that emotion consume me, to settle the pain that had risen inside my soul - to heal the pain I knew he felt. I let it consume and override the doubt that all we really needed was one another. That this empty hole could be filled with the love we felt for one another. — Cassandra Giovanni

Well, in 1947 ... in Europe and in Italy especially, we thought of America as all-powerful. — Giovanni Agnelli

I'm inspired every day by the great captains of industry and enlightened entrepreneurs like my great-great-grandfather and founder of Fiat, Giovanni Agnelli, who personally knew all his workers and gave so much to this country, or Adriano Olivetti, unique and innovative in every way. — Lapo Elkann

In the name of peace
They waged the wars
ain't they got no shame — Nikki Giovanni

Remember a feeling of excitement, of sudden inspiration, when I was visiting Giovanni Boccaccio's home in the walled village of Certaldo, outside of Florence. (Boccaccio was the medieval author of The Decameron.) It was as though I had met my muse! After this trip, I read The Decameron and began writing the Alchemy Series in earnest. — Mary Pope Osborne

All systems require myths for their longevity. — Nikki Giovanni

The world is not a pleasant place to be without someone to hold and be held by. — Nikki Giovanni

I dare you to read a book this weekend! War and Peace? To Kill a Mocking Bird? Catcher in the Rye? The Heart is a Lonely Hunter? For Whom the Bell Tolls? As i lay Dying? Giovanni's Room? The Bell Jar? These books changed my life. #artforfreedom #rebelheart — Madonna Ciccone

You have to take into account it was the cell phone that became what the modern-day concept of a phone call is, and this is a device that's attached to your hip 24/7. Before that there was 'leave a message' and before that there was 'hopefully you're home.' — Giovanni Ribisi

I am threatened by the resolve that you are my soul. You are my being, you are every breath I take, you are my home, you are my sweet sin. — Cassandra Giovanni

Because I absolutely, positively cannot fuck you, Lola, he says like it's a formal declaration.
I furrow my brow and salute him, which makes him snicker. — Bianca Giovanni

You can calculate the market cap of a company by taking the amount of shares outstanding x the price of one share. Microsoft (MSFT) has 7.91 billion shares outstanding and the price of one share is at $54.65 at the moment. This puts MSFT market — Giovanni Rigters

Acting is ephemeral. It's not like making a painting that lasts forever. You're doing something, and the very action which comes and goes, is being demonstrated in front of you. Within that process, you're trying to go against the grain. — Giovanni Ribisi

I was responding to one thing for the woman I knew, and there's another thing for what did she give, right. She [Nina Simone] was a great teacher. — Nikki Giovanni

If i can't have what i want ... then my job is to want what i've got and be satisfied that at least there is something more to want — Nikki Giovanni

I told myself all sorts of lies, standing there at the bar, but I could not move. And this was partly because I knew that it did not really matter anymore; it did not even matter if I never spoke to Giovanni again; for they had become visible, as visible as the wafers on the shirt of the flaming princess, they stormed all over me, my awakening, my insistent possibilities. — James Baldwin

For you teach very clearly by your behaviour how slowly and how meagerly our senses proceed in the investigation of ever inexhaustible nature. — Giovanni Battista Beccaria

I knew Stokely [Carmichael] and them, but when you got to that, you saw that Nina Simone started to take up their burden. She started to preach for them. She was taking on the burden of "I want to tell the people." — Nikki Giovanni

Offended self-love never forgives. — Giovanni Ruffini

You must read, you must persevere, you must sit up nights, you must inquire, and exert the utmost power of your mind. If one way does not lead to the desired meaning, take another; if obstacles arise, then still another; until, if your strength holds out, you will find that clear which at first looked dark. — Giovanni Boccaccio

Humor is hard to catch in a second language. Especially when you're as serious a young man as Giovanni. He said to me the other night, 'When you are ironic, I am always behind you. I am slower. It is like you are the lightning and I am the thunder. — Elizabeth Gilbert

You can lower yourselves to the level of the beast, but you can also be reborn as a divine creature by the free will of your spirit. Man can become what he likes - subhuman or superhuman, as he wishes. — Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola

Educational progress is a national concern; education is a private one. — Nikki Giovanni

His headstone said
FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST
But death is a slave's freedom
We seek the freedom of free men
And the construction of a world
Where Martin Luther King could have lived and
preached non-violence — Nikki Giovanni

The catchword I use with my classes is: The authority of the writer always overcomes the skepticism of the reader. — Nikki Giovanni

Black love is black wealth — Nikki Giovanni

Without Scientology, I would be in an alley somewhere looking for dope. — Giovanni Ribisi

I like being
The moon
To your sun — Nikki Giovanni

Only if there's an outbreak of the bubonic plague. — Giovanni Trapattoni

I've been allowed to grow over the past twenty years. I've managed to avoid being trapped in one moment of my career and for that, I'm very thankful. — Giovanni Ribisi

I am of the generation of segregation. Black Lives Matter is post. I said today, and I will say all the time, "If Nina [Simone] were here, she'd have her Black Lives Matter [T-shirt] on." I think they're great kids. They don't need me or anybody else to tell them what to do. — Nikki Giovanni

I'm really happy with where I am, the movies in my life. Not satisfied, necessarily. But I won't put it on somebody else, blame anybody else for my position in the business. It's the choices I have made. — Giovanni Ribisi

Husband and wife,
so much in common, how different in type! Such a contrast, and yet such harmony, strength and weakness blended together! — Giovanni Ruffini

There, as the sacred mysteries tell us, the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones occupy the first places; but, unable to yield to them, and impatient of any second place, let us emulate their dignity and glory. And, if we will it, we shall be inferior to them in nothing. — Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola

Human memory is short and terribly fickle. — Janine Di Giovanni

Tell the truth, Giovanni Vecchio." A mischievous look came to her eye. "You have a butler, a cool car, and I've only ever seen you at night ... "
He froze, tension suddenly evident in the set of his shoulders. Beatrice leaned closer and whispered, "You're Batman, aren't you? — Elizabeth Hunter

The enlightened rational man is not unlike the title character in Mozart's opera "Don Giovanni": a likeable rake, intelligent and enterprising, free to do as he pleases, outmaneuvering his honorable, tradition-bound adversaries at every step. One cannot begrudge him his liberty and pursuit of happiness, but looming large above him is his fatal flaw: his mind's maturity does not match his freedom. His pursuits are frivolous, tawdry and destructive. And this, we maintain, is the historical moment of our techno-scientific world: like some allegorical alien race in a science fiction story, we have placed broad freedoms and enormous power in the hands of a flawed creature: ourselves. Empirical reason has brought us here, and by its light we will have to find a way forward. — Danko Antolovic

A lot of people refuse to do things because they don't want to go naked, don't want to go without guarantee. But that's what's got to happen. You go naked until you die — Nikki Giovanni

I am a big fan of the electronic book. I hate to see the old bookstores close, but they have to reinvent themselves. I believe the First Edition bookstore will be the next thing. People will read electronically, then decide they want to own that book. The author will then be invited to the old bookstores to sign. I think books will always be with us, but they will fill a different need. — Nikki Giovanni

We have given you, O Adam, no visage proper to yourself, nor endowment properly your own, in order that whatever place, whatever form, whatever gifts you may, with premeditation, select, these same you may have and possess through your own judgement and decision. The nature of all other creatures is defined and restricted within laws which We have laid down; you, by contrast, impeded by no such restrictions, may, by your own free will, to whose custody We have assigned you, trace for yourself the lineaments of your own nature [ ... ]. We have made you a creature neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, in order that you may, as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer. It will be in your power to descend to the lower, brutish forms of life; you will be able, through your own decision, to rise again to the superior orders whose life is divine. — Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola

My role [as a war correspondent] is to bring a voice to people who are voiceless [and] to shine a light in the darkest corners of the world. — Janine Di Giovanni

A teacher is like a candle that lights others by consuming itself. — Giovanni Ruffini

Fancy borrows much from memory, and so looks back to the past. — Giovanni Ruffini

FOR SONIA SANCHEZ — Nikki Giovanni

Tenzin said, "More popcorn, my boy."
Giovanni ripped the plastic bag open and held the paper bag. "This is ridiculous. I'm not a kitchen appliance. — Elizabeth Hunter

Oil is once again robbing the industry of a return to profitability. Cost reductions and efficiency gains have never been more critical. — Giovanni Bisignani

My Mozart career began as a teenager in Los Angeles, singing arias from 'Le Nozze di Figaro' and 'Don Giovanni.' — Danielle De Niese

If you don't understand yourself you don't understand anybody else. — Nikki Giovanni

Daddy says the world is a drum tight and hard and i told him i'm gonna beat out my own rhythm — Nikki Giovanni

Trifling favors are readily acknowledged, though cheaply esteemed; but important ones are most rarely remembered. — Giovanni Ruffini

I'm definitely one of those people that what comes into my head falls out of my mouth. That's a way for me to be even more creative, to sort of get the ball rolling and start parlaying off of somebody and interacting. That charge or that friction sometimes - if it's positive or negative - is inspiring, and it gets people to be I think creative, maybe. — Giovanni Ribisi

Writing isn't about creating perfect characters. There's no such thing. It's about creating characters that are real; flawed
yet beautiful, in that they know they need another person. Needing someone else doesn't make them weak; if they believed all they needed was them self, they would be. A strong heroine isn't afraid to admit that a best friend, or soul mate, is exactly what they need at one moment or another. A strong heroine never stands alone. They stand tall; they believe in who they are. They are perfect in every human flaw, because as humans we are flawed. And in every flaw, I see the perfection of their souls. Writers breath life into simple words and create beings
flaws and all. — Cassandra Giovanni

Easter is meant to be a symbol of hope, renewal, and new life. — Janine Di Giovanni

Travelers describe a tree in the island of Java whose pestiferous exhalations blight every tiny blade of grass within the compass of its shade. So it is with despotism. — Giovanni Ruffini

The Communists at that moment were very strong in Italy, and the Italian Communist Party was the biggest Communist Party outside the Soviet Union. — Giovanni Agnelli

Far worse it is
To lose than never to have tasted bliss. — Giovanni Battista Guarini

Do as we say, and not as we do — Giovanni Boccaccio

Dostoevski was on to something. You are the path you choose. You are what your vocation is. — Giovanni Ribisi

BEFORE YOU JUMP OFF A BRIDGE OR HANG YOURSELF OR BE UNHAPPY PLEASE CONSIDER: LIVE FOR YOURSELF; THOSE WHO HATE YOU HAVE NO PURCHASE — Nikki Giovanni

He moved heaven and earth to find you, darling girl. — Elizabeth Hunter

I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy. — Nikki Giovanni

She doesn't have any terrific talent for acting, but that's how it appears to go. People don't do what they have a talent for but what the preoccupation leads to. If they're good at auto-repairing they have to sing Don Giovanni; if they can sing they have to be architects; and if they have a gift for architecture they wish to become school superintendents or abstract painters or anything else. Anything! It's a spite. It's having to prove full and ultimate self-sufficiency or some such monster dream that you don't need anyone else to do these things for you. — Saul Bellow

If you see a philosopher determining all things by means of right reason, him you shall reverence: he is a heavenly being and not of this earth. — Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola

So long she held on in this mourning manner, that, what by the
continuall watering of the Basile, and putrifaction of the head, so
buried in the pot of earth; it grew very flourishing, and most
odorifferous to such as scented it, that as no other Basile could
possibly yeeld so sweete a savour. — Giovanni Boccaccio

I hoped to burn out, through Hella, my image of Giovanni and the reality of his touch - I hoped to drive out fire with fire. — James Baldwin

In rereading one of the best essays I know on Dante's Paradiso, Giovanni Getto's "Aspetti della poesia di Dante" (Aspects of Dante's Poetry, 1947), one can see that there is not one single image of Paradise that does not stem from a tradition that was part of the medieval reader's heritage, I won't say of ideas, but of daily fantasies and feelings. It is from the biblical tradition and the church fathers that these radiances come from, these vortices of flame, these lamps, these suns, these brilliances and brightnesses emerging "like a horizon clearing" (Par. 14.69) ... For medieval man, reading about this light and luminosity was equivalent to when we dream about the sinuous gracefulness of a movie star, the elegant lines of a car ... It is this appeal to a poetry of understanding that can make the Paradiso fascinating even for the modern reader who has lost the reference points familiar to his medieval counterpart. — Umberto Eco

Don't want to be near you for the thoughts we share but the words we never have to speak. — Nikki Giovanni

You must invent your own games and teach us old ones how to play. — Nikki Giovanni

I appreciate and enjoy my age. — Nikki Giovanni

One usually dies because one is alone, or because one has got into something over one's head. One often dies because one does not have the right alliances, because one is not given support. In Sicily the Mafia kills the servants of the State that the State has not been able to protect. — Giovanni Falcone

Life is a process where people mix and match, fall apart and come back together. — Nikki Giovanni

The problem with love is not what we feel but what we wish we felt when we began to feel we should feel something. — Nikki Giovanni

Every time I went to the doctor when I was in my twenties, he repeated the same thing to me: don't wait too long to have children. — Janine Di Giovanni

If you're creating a slave situation, you would almost never bring women. And if we look at Slavery for example, we look at the Greeks and the Romans, right? It was always men. They never brought any women. Because women carry the seeds of the revolution, right? And if you have the men by themselves, then you can do what the French did with the Blackfeet, which is breed them out. — Nikki Giovanni

The perception of the beautiful is gradual, and not a lightning revelation; it requires not only time, but some study. — Giovanni Ruffini