Quotes & Sayings About Sicily

It's like squeezing tripe: nothing comes out,' he said, meaning the Colasberna brothers, their partners, the town in general and Sicily as a whole. — Leonardo Sciascia

Again the Prince found himself facing one of the enigmas of Sicily; in this secret island, where houses are barred and peasants refuse to admit they even know the way to their own village in clear view on a hillock within a few minutes' walk from here, in spite of the ostentatious show of mystery, reserve is a myth. — Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa

Italy police arrest 8 in Mafia wind farms plot. Operation "Aeolus," named after the ancient Greek god of winds, netted eight suspects, arrested in the Trapani area of western Sicily [and on the Italian mainland]. Police in Trapani said the local Mafia bribed city officials in nearby Mazara del Vallo so the town would invest in wind farms to produce energy. (Associated Press, 2009 [Google hosted]) — John Etherington

All of Sicily is a dimension of the imagination. — Leonardo Sciascia

Preparing the communal evening meal sometimes caused arguments. Every village in Sicily had a different recipe for squid and eels, disagreed on what herbs should be disbarred from the tomato sauce. And whether sausages should ever be baked. — Mario Puzo

In Sicily where food is love and the street is a stage street food is more than a cheap meal it's Communion. — Theresa Maggio

I had to inspect all fighter units in Russia, Africa, Sicily, France, and Norway. I had to be everywhere. — Adolf Galland

The failure of Christianity in the areas west from Sicily was even greater, and was increased by the spread of Arab outlooks and influence to that area, and especially to Spain. — Carroll Quigley

Frank Sinatra took me to a whole new planet. I worked with him until he passed away in '98. He left me his ring. I never take it off. Now, when I go to Sicily, I don't need a passport. I just flash my ring. — Quincy Jones

One encounters in the streets, late at night on the evenings of fetes, the most strange and bizarre passers-by. Do these nights of popular celebration cause ancient and forgotten avatars to stir in the depths of the human soul? This evening, in the movement of the sweaty and excited crowd, I am certain that I passed between the masks of the liberated Bythinians and encountered the courtesans of the Roman decadence.
There emerged, this evening, from that swarming esplanade of Des Invalides - amid the crackle of fireworks, the shooting stars, the stink of frying, the hiccuping of drunkards and the reeking atmosphere of menageries - the wild effusions of one of Nero's festivals.
It was like the odour of a May evening on the Basso-Porto of Naples. It was easy to believe that the faces in that crowd were Sicilian. — Jean Lorrain

Were a man to spend only one day in Sicily and ask, "What must one see?" I would answer him without hesitation, "Taormina." It is only a landscape, but a landscape where you find everything on earth that seems made to seduce the eyes, the mind and the imagination. — Guy De Maupassant

But nobody yet had been able to dig down to what was most captivating about her: this was the mysterious ability of her soul to apprehend in life only that which had once attracted and tormented her in childhood, the time when the soul's instinct is infallible; to seek out the amusing and the touching: to feel constantly an intolerable, tender pity for the creature whose life is helpless and unhappy; to feel across hundreds of miles that somewhere in Sicily a thin-legged little donkey with a shaggy belly is being brutally beaten. Whenever she did come across a creature that was being hurt, she experienced a kind of legendary eclipse - when inexplicable night comes down and ash flies and blood appears on the walls - and it seemed that if at once, at once, she did not help, did not cut short another's torture (the existence of which it was absolutely impossible to explain in a world so conducive to happiness), her heart would not stand it, and she would die. — Vladimir Nabokov

There's a proverb, a maxim, that runs, 'The dead man is dead; let's give a hand to the living.' Now, you say that to a man from the North, and he visualizes the scene of an accident with one dead and one injured man; it's reasonable to let the dead man be and to set about saving the injured man. But a Sicilian visualizes a murdered man and his murderer, and the living man who's to be helped is the murderer. — Leonardo Sciascia

My best vacation was renting a boat and motoring along the Adriatic, going along the Croatian coast, before it became so fashionable. I've also sailed around the Turkish islands, the Greek islands and Sicily. — Ian Schrager

sticks and stones might break your bones, but cement pays homage to tradition. — Estelle Getty

I'm tired and it's taking an increasing amount out of me, more than I have to give physically. And that's why I want to move to Sicily and buy that little farm and raise a flock of goats and geese. I find it peaceful ... and it would be a nice way to end life. — Tennessee Williams

Cornwall bears a certain resemblance to Italy: each is like a leg or boot, but Italy stands a-tiptoe to the south, whereas Cornwall is thrust out to the west. But, whereas Italy is kicking Sicily as a football, Cornwall has but the shattered group of the Scilly Isles at its toe. — Sabine Baring-Gould

The war in Continental Europe appeared to be over. Germany had won. Europe was Fascist from Poland to Sicily and from Hungary to Portugal. There was no fighting anywhere. Rumors said the British government had discussed peace terms. — Ken Follett

What makes these special Beaujolais attractive is the same thing that has always made Beaujolais attractive: the price. Given the insane prices of so many wines right now, Beaujolais and the delicious wines pouring in from southern Italy and Sicily keep many wine drinkers from switching to iced tea. — Frank J. Prial

I collect church collapses, recreationally. Did you see the recent one in Sicily? Marvelous! The facade fell on sixty-five grandmothers at a special mass. Was that evil? If so, who did it? If he's up there, he just loves it, Officer Starling. Typhoid and swans - it all comes from the same place. — Thomas Harris

My memories of my childhood are wonderful memories. I feel that I was privileged because I grew up in a beautiful city. It is Catania, on the eastern coast of Sicily. It's a place filled with sun, close to the beach. — Luca Parmitano

*NB. Carlos III of Spain, Carlo I of Parma, Carlo VIII of Naples and Carlo V of Sicily were the same man. — Norman Davies

Mafia landmarks are found everywhere in beautiful Sicily, an unfortunate byproduct of the island's tragic history. By mapping theses strange sites and telling the amazing stories behind them, I hope to remind readers that the Mafia is not a romantic relic of the past. — Carl Russo

The Negro is not the man farthest down. The condition of the coloured farmer in the most backward parts of the Southern States of America, even where he has the least education and the least encouragement, is incomparably better than the condition and opportunities of the agricultural population in Sicily. — Booker T. Washington

Misgovernment is of four kinds, often in combination. They are: 1) tyranny or oppression, of which history provides so many well-known examples that they do not need citing; 2) excessive ambition, such as Athens' attempted conquest of Sicily in the Peloponnesian War, Philip II's of England via the Armada, Germany's twice-attempted rule of Europe by a self-conceived master race, Japan's bid for an empire of Asia; 3) incompetence or decadence, as in the case of the late Roman empire, the last Romanovs and the last imperial dynasty of China; and finally 4) folly or perversity. — Barbara Tuchman

My dad lives in Sicily, so I'm half Italian and half Irish - it's a fiery combination. — Nico Mirallegro

Culturally, however, Sicily had great advantages. Muslim, Byzantine, Italian, and German civilization met and mingled there as nowhere else. Greek and Arabic were still living languages in Sicily. Frederick learnt to speak six languages fluently, and in all six he was witty. He was at home in Arabian philosophy, and had friendly relations with Mohammedans, which scandalized pious Christians. He was a Hohenstaufen, and in Germany could count as a German. But in culture and sentiment he was Italian, with a tincture of Byzantine and Arab. His contemporaries gazed upon him with astonishment gradually turning into horror; they called him 'wonder of the world and marvellous innovator'. — Bertrand Russell

Maybe the whole of italy is becoming a sort of Sicily. — Leonardo Sciascia

Sicily is paradise. I live in paradise. Now pass the pasta please. — Alfred Zappala

In one typical battalion, of forty-one officers who had landed on Sicily in July, only nine remained, and six of them had been wounded, according — Rick Atkinson

Forces. What utter treachery!" Hitler then makes misleading statements about how he and Mussolini had agreed to defend Sicily. The Fuehrer also offers a backhanded apology to the Japanese for allowing a large amount of the Italian Navy to fall into Allied hands. However, it is Hitler's current plan for the defense of Italy that interests Washington. Oshima quotes him on this as saying: "[The Allies] have two courses: either they will go north in Italy or they will try to land in the Balkans. I am inclined to believe they will take the latter course. I — Bruce Lee

In Sicily, women are more dangerous than shotguns. — Mario Puzo

What would the world come to if people kept carrying grudges against all reason? That has been the cross of Sicily, where men are so busy with vendettas they have no time to earn bread for their families. — Mario Puzo

If you want to propose marriage to your girlfriend and you live in England and she is in Sicily, do the decent thing and walk down there. Travelling by car or aeroplane wouldn't be right at such a moment. — Werner Herzog

Being summoned by the Athenians out of Sicily to plead for his life, Alcibiades absconded, saying that that criminal was a fool who studied a defence when he might fly for it. — Plutarch

Three quarters of the American population literally believe in religious miracles. The numbers who believe in the devil, in resurrection, in God doing this and that - it's astonishing. These numbers aren't duplicated anywhere else in the industrial world. You'd have to maybe go to mosques in Iran or do a poll among old ladies in Sicily to get numbers like this. Yet this is the American population. — Noam Chomsky

Cultures of honor tend to take root in highlands and other marginally fertile areas, such as Sicily or the mountainous Basque regions of Spain. If you live on some rocky mountainside, the explanation goes, you can't farm. You probably raise goats or sheep, and the kind of culture that grows up around being a herdsman is very different from the culture that grows up around growing crops. The survival of a farmer depends on the cooperation of others in the community. But a herdsman is off by himself. Farmers also don't have to worry that their livelihood will be stolen in the night, because crops can't easily be stolen unless, of course, a thief wants to go to the trouble of harvesting an entire field on his own. But a herdsman does have to worry. He's under constant threat of ruin through the loss of his animals. So he has to be aggressive: he has to make it clear, through his words and deeds, that he is not weak. — Malcolm Gladwell

In some strata of Greek and Roman society the engineer was actually denigrated, higher esteem being accorded to poets, playwrights and sculptors. According to Plutarch, Archimedes was praised for refusing to contaminate his theoretical and mathematical science with practical applications, although under extreme pressure at the siege of Syracuse in Sicily he did design practical machinery. — Stephanie Dalley

I remembered his older brother, who had died in Sicily, in battle for the free world- he had barely had time to see Sicily before he died and had assuredly never seen the free world. — James Baldwin

The first (barbers) that entered Italy came out of Sicily and it was in the 454 yeare after the foundation of Rome. Brought in they were by P. Ticinius Mena as Verra doth report for before that time they never cut their hair. The first that was shaven every day was Scipio Africanus, and after cometh Augustus the Emperor who evermore used the razor. — Pliny The Elder

I think that my interpretation of Italian was a lot more southern than what my husband cooks. You know, I grew up in Queens and in Brooklyn, and we - really, it's more southern. It's Naples and Sicily. It's heavier. It's over-spiced. And like most Americans, I thought spaghetti and meatballs was genius. — Debi Mazar

Islam invaded Europe twice from the Mediterranean - first in Iberia, the second time in southeastern Europe, as well as nibbling at Sicily and elsewhere. Christianity invaded Islam multiple times, the first time in the Crusades and in the battle to expel the Muslims from Iberia. Then it forced the Turks back from central Europe. The Christians finally crossed the Mediterranean in the 19th century, taking control of large parts of North Africa. Each of these two religions wanted to dominate the other. Each seemed close to its goal. Neither was successful. What remains true is that Islam and Christianity were obsessed with each other from the first encounter. Like Rome and Egypt they traded with each other and made war on each other. — George Friedman

I like to collect aprons from different places I go. I first started when I was in Italy because I thought that would be really appropriate. I got a hand-stitched Italian apron from this woman in Sicily who put my name on it, and it said, 'Sicily, Italy.' So now I get one from everywhere I go. — Britt Robertson

In all of human history no country or no people have suffered such terrible slavery, conquest and foreign oppression and no country and no people have struggled so strenuously for their emancipation than Sicily and the Sicilians. — Karl Marx

Empedocles (fl. 445 B.C., in Sicily) developed to a further stage the idea of evolution.17 Organs arise not by design but by selection. Nature makes many trials and experiments with organisms, combining organs variously; where the combination meets environmental needs the organism survives and perpetuates its like; where the combination fails, the organism is weeded out; as time goes on, organisms are more and more intricately and successfully adapted to their surroundings. — Will Durant

Who would condescend to strike down the mere things that he does not
fear? Who would debase himself to be merely brave, like any common
prizefighter? Who would stoop to be fearless
like a tree? Fight the
thing that you fear. You remember the old tale of the English clergyman
who gave the last rites to the brigand of Sicily, and how on his
death-bed the great robber said, 'I can give you no money, but I can
give you advice for a lifetime: your thumb on the blade, and strike
upwards.' So I say to you, strike upwards, if you strike at the stars. — G.K. Chesterton

My dear Guiliano," he said, "how is it that you and Don Croce do not join together to rule Sicily? He has the wisdom of age, you have the idealism of youth. — Mario Puzo

Our journey is one of discovery on Sicily.
Like the past Greek writers.orators,historians and philosophers we are all searching for answers on Earth — Daniel Peter Buckley

Student journeys which were important to me were Sicily, Greece, and Egypt, where I really saw these buildings, and that is where you're able to grasp what things mean. — Ben Nicholson

We haven't time to spare to hear whether it was between Italy and Sicily that he ran into a storm or somewhere outside the world we know-when every day we're running into our own storms, spiritual storms, and driven by vice into all the troubles that Ulysses ever knew. — Seneca The Younger

Many critics of the Crusades would seem to suppose that after the Muslims had overrun a major portion of Christendom, they should have been ignored or forgiven; suggestions have been made about turning the other cheek. This outlook is certainly unrealistic and probably insincere. Not only had the Byzantines lost most of their empire; the enemy was at their gates. And the loss of Spain, Sicily, and southern Italy, as well as a host of Mediterranean islands, was bitterly resented in Europe. Hence, as British historian Derek Lomax (1933-1992) explained, 'The popes, like most Christians, believed war against the Muslims to be justified partly because the latter had usurped by force lands which once belonged to Christians and partly because they abused the Christians over whom they ruled and such Christian lands as they could raid for slaves, plunder and the joys of destruction.' It was time to strike back. — Rodney Stark

I hate and detest Sicily in so far as I love it, and in so far as it does not respond to the kind of love I would like to have for it. — Leonardo Sciascia

I also really loved the sea when I was young, when I lived in Sicily, but unfortunately the sea here has been reduced to a trash dump. It's a horrible pain going to the beach; you risk getting an infection or getting tar all over you. — Dacia Maraini

My grandfather was a chef for a Baron in Sicily before he came to America. I grew up with him. I used to do my homework at one end of the kitchen table while he cooked at the other end. — Vincent Schiavelli

For over twenty-five centuries we've been bearing the weight of superb and heterogeneous civilizations, all from outside, none made by ourselves, none that we could call our own.

This violence of landscape, this cruelty of climate, this continual tension in everything, and even these monuments of the past, magnificent yet incomprehensible because not built by us and yet standing round us like lovely mute ghosts; all those rulers who landed by main force from every direction who were at once obeyed, soon detested, and always misunderstood, their only expressions works of art we couldn't understand and taxes which we understood only too well and which they spent elsewhere: all these things have formed our character, which is thus conditioned by events outside our control as well as by a terrifying insularity of mind. — Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa

Scientists say that the palm tree line, that is the climate suitable to growth of the palm, is moving north, five hundred metres, I think it was, every year ... The palm tree line ... I call it the coffee line, the strong black coffee line ... It's rising like mercury in a thermometer, this palm tree line, this strong coffee line, this scandal line, rising up throughout Italy and already passed Rome ... — Leonardo Sciascia

To have seen Italy without having seen Sicily is to not have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the clue to everything. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Sicily is more beautiful than any woman. — Truman Capote

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

Harry leaned back, his hat over his inscrutable face.
"Well?" Ben nudged him. "Thomas Paine, or a nubile beauty from Sicily?"
"Clearly Thomas Paine. I'd be asleep now in my bed."
"Do you remember the name of the street they live on?"
"Let's see ... Crazy Street? Cuckoo Street? Commitment Street? Cranial Injury Inflicted by Enraged Sibling Street?"
"Canal Street! Thank you."
"I'm going to stop speaking."
"Harry, admit it, if you weren't so utterly uninterested in all women save Alice, you would be sitting on this train yourself."
"Ben Shaw, I hate to point out the startlingly obvious, but I am sitting on this train myself."
"Exactly!"
"Ugh."
"I'm surprised to learn that Lawrence is the world leader in the production of cotton and woven textiles. Are you?"
"Stunned. — Paullina Simons

We built our fashion around three fundamental concepts: Sicily, tailoring, and tradition. Our dream is to create a style which is timeless, and to create clothes with such a strong personality that whoever sees them can instantly say without a shadow of a doubt: this is a Dolce & Gabbana. — Domenico Dolce

Her gaze dims as her nostalgia for Palermo overcomes her. Those smells of seaweed dried by the sun, of capers, of ripe figs, she will never find them anywhere else; those burnt and scented shores, those waves slowly breaking, jasmine petals flaking in the sun. — Dacia Maraini

I was born in Messina, Sicily. I stayed there until I was 18 and finished my studies. — Maria Grazia Cucinotta

The first parts of Europe 'to emerge from barbarism,' Briffault says, were those most directly under the influence of 'Moorish' culture: the Spanish Marches of Catalonia, Provence, and Sicily. — S.E. Al-Djazairi

We feel a special bond with Sicily and its people - in fact, our first campaigns were shot in Sicily, like the one shot in Vucciria Sicilian historical market We enjoyed showing the faces and the characters that crowd that beautiful market every day. — Stefano Gabbana

My family was all born in Sicily and I'm Italian-American. They're the real thing. They're authentic Italians, and honestly they're the most open-minded, nicest people in the world and nothing can really offend them. That's the way I think true Sicilians are. — Vinny Guadagnino

In Sicily it doesn't matter whether things are done well or done badly; the sin which we Sicilians never forgive is simply that of 'doing' at all. — Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa

No Southern people ever seem to possess the energy of their Northern brothers, and in Sicily a dolce far niente life is much enjoyed. Time is no object. According to Pliny, Aristhomacus watched the life of the bee carefully for fifty-eight years, which is just the sort of work a Sicilian of to-day would like. — Alec-Tweedie

One of the biggest dishes in Sicily is couscous, and there's always been a North African influence on Italian culture, culinary culture there. — Jonas Carpignano

Jesus Christ, Lord of all things! You see my heart, you know my desires. Possess all that I am - you alone. I am your sheep; make me worthy to overcome the devil. — Agatha Of Sicily

Tell the truth, all Sicilians prefer smelling the shit of their villages to the best perfumes in Paris. What am I doing here? I could have escaped to Brazil like some others. Ah, we love where we are born, we Sicilians, but Sicily does not love us. — Mario Puzo

Sicily could only be an island, less by the caprice of nature than by her own insolence. As though she might have quit Italy had she not already been born separate from it. — Marlena De Blasi

Sicily has suffered 13 foreign dominations from which she has taken both the best and the worst. The sequence of different cultures has made Sicily a fascinating place, quite unlike any other. — Andrea Camilleri

Sometimes, if you want to be happy, you've got to run away to Bath and marry a punk rocker. Sometimes you've got to dye your hair cobalt blue, or wander remote islands in Sicily, or cook your way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year, for no very good reason. — Julie Powell

My God. You have the heart of a capo, do you know that? You could have brought Sicily to its knees. No don would stand against you. — C.D. Reiss

Sicily is a blessed land. First, because of its geographic position in the Mediterranean. Second, for its history and all the different peoples who have settled there: Arabs, Greeks, Normans, the Swedes. That has made us different from others. We exaggerate, we overdo. We love Greek tragedy. We cry, we fight, sometimes for nothing. — Marcello Giordani

But if I were asked to pick one constant, one quality that seems dependable, immutable, endlessly available, I'd say that it was intensity. For nothing in Sicily seems withheld, done half way, restrained or suppressed. There's nothing to correspond to say, the ironic, the cerebral remove at which a Frenchman might consider an idea or a question, or the Scandinavian distrust of the sloppy, emotive response. — Francine Prose

Nowhere has truth such a short life as in Sicily; a fact has scarcely happened five minutes before its genuine kernel has vanished, been camouflaged, embellished, disfigured, squashed, annihilated by imagination and self interest; shame, fear, generosity, malice, opportunism, charity, all the passions, good as well as evil, fling themselves onto the fact and tear it to pieces; very soon it has vanished altogether. — Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa

I speak a little bit of Italian, yeah. I understand more than I speak. I speak more of a dialect; my mum's from Naples and my dad's from Sicily, so it comes out little a bit of a cocktail of the Italian language. — Luke Pasqualino

My mother's mother came to this country in the usual way--she got on a boat with other immigrants and sailed from Sicily. She wasn't one of them, however: neither tired nor poor or part of any huddled mass. Instead, she traveled alone, with her money in one sock and a knife in the other, coming to the new world with an old world motive--to murder the man that had left her for America. — Andrew Cotto

All Sicilian expression, even the most violent, is really wish fulfillment: our sensuality is a hankering for oblivion, our shooting and knifing a hankering for death; our laziness, our spiced and drugged sherbets, a hankering for voluptuous immobility, that is, for death again; our meditative air is that of a void wanting to scrutinize the enigmas of nirvana. — Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa

The peasants of Sicily, who have kept their own wheat and make their own natural brown bread, ah, it is amazing how fresh and sweet and clean their loaf seems, so perfumed, as home-made bread used all to be before the war. — D.H. Lawrence

My dear Homer, if you are really only once removed from the truth, with reference to virtue, instead of being twice removed and the manufacturer of a phantom, according to our definition of an imitator, and if you need to be able to distinguish between the pursuits which make men better or worse, in private and in public, tell us what city owes a better constitution to you, as Lacedaemon owes hers to Lycurgus, and as many cities, great and small, owe theirs to many other legislators? What state attributes to you the benefits derived from a good code of laws? Italy and Sicily recognize Charondas in this capacity, and we solon. But what state recognizes you. — Plato