Portinari Quotes & Sayings

May suitable doses of guaranteed sensual pleasure and slow, long-lasting enjoyment preserve us from the contagion of the multitude who mistake frenzy for efficiency. — Folco Portinari

We live the stories we tell; the stories we don't tell live us. — Mark Doty

How convenient it would be to many of our great men and great families of doubtful origin, could they have the privilege of the heroes of yore, who, whenever their origin was involved in
obscurity, modestly announced themselves descended from a god. — Washington Irving

The Beatrice that obsessed Dante was a Florentine named Bice di Folco Portinari. Envision this moment (and, in all fairness, I am envisioning it the way Henry Holiday did in his exquisite nineteenth-century painting): Bice is walking beside the Arno River, dressed in white, the fabric clinging to her legs and outlining her slender thighs, and there is Dante. He meets her at the corner of one of the bridges that span
the river. His left hand, at first glimpse, is moving casually toward his hip; it is only on a more careful study that one realizes his hand is actually going up to his heart. Meanwhile, his right hand is resting on the bridge's waist-high stone balustrade, as if Bico's beauty is such that he needs to steady himself when he beholds her. — Chris Bohjalian

I think rejection is a huge part of the business and there's so many cute girls that grow up with kind of being adored or people kind of bending over backwards for them. I see a lot of girls who aren't used to rejection because of that, and now all of a sudden they drop out of the business. — April Rose

The halberd is inferior to the spear on the battlefield. With the spear you can take the initiative, the halberd is defensive. — Miyamoto Musashi

If you can't be happy, then be something else. Be useful, that would be good. Decorative, if you like. Selfish, if you must. But don't whine about it. — K.J. Charles

The most important truths always appear first as blasphemies or obscenities. That's why every great innovator is persecuted. And the sacraments look obscene, too, to an outsider. The eucharist is just sublimated cannibalism, to the unawakened. When the Pope kisses the feet of the laity, he looks like an old toe-queen to some people. The rites of Pan look like a suburban orgy. — Robert Anton Wilson