Quotes
"In a family which for centuries had been incapable even of adding up their own
expenditure and subtracting their own debts [the Prince] was the first (and last) to have
a genuine bent for mathematics; this he had applied to astronomy ... in his mind, now,
pride and mathematical analysis were so linked as to give him an illusion that the stars
obeyed his calculations ..." p. 12
"The Prince put [a rose] under his nose and seemed to be sniffing the thigh of a dancer
from the Opera." p.14
"Dying for somebody or for something, that was perfectly normal, of course: but the
person dying should know, or at least feel sure, that someone knows for whom or for
what he is dying ..." p. 15.
"...Tancredi could never do wrong in his uncle's eyes: so the real fault lay with the
times, these confused times in which a young man of good family wasn't even free to
play a game ... without involving himself with compromising acquaintanceships ..." p.24
"'...seven children I've had with her, seven; and never once have I seen her navel.'"p.27
"... the wealth of centuries had been transmuted into ornament, luxury, pleasure ...
wealth, like an old wine, had left the dregs of greed, even of care, and prudence fall to
the bottom of the barrel, leaving only verve and color ..."p. 33
"...next to the main farm building a deep well ... mutely offered various services: as
swimming pool, drinking trough, prison or cemetery. It slaked thirst, spread typhus,
guarded the kidnapped and hid the corpses both of animals and men till they were
reduced to the smoothest of anonymous skeletons..." p. 50
"The sun ... was showing itself the true ruler of Sicily; the crude brash sun, the
drugging sun, which annulled every will, kept all things in servile immobility, cradled
in violence and arbitrary dreams..." p. 40
"These early morning fantasies were the very worst that could happen to a man of
middle age ... they left a sediment of sorrow which, accumulating day by day, would
in the end be the real cause of his death." p. 56
"A man of forty-five can consider himself still young till the moment comes when he
realizes that he has children old enough to fall in love. The Prince felt old age com
over him in one blow...suddenly he saw himself as a white haired old man walking
beside -herds of grand-children on billy-goats in the public gardens of Villa Giulia."
p.66
"...under her pale blue bodice [Concetta's] heart was being torn to shreds; the violent
Salina blood came surging up in her, and beneath a smooth forehead she found herself
brooding over day-dreams of poisoning ." p. 77
"Donnafugata with its palace and its new rich was only a mile or two away, but
seemed a dim memory like those landscapes sometimes glimpsed at the distant end of
a railway tunnel; its troubles and splendors appeared even more insignificant than if
they belonged to the past, for compared to this remote unchangeable landscape they
seemed part of the future ... extracts from a utopia thought up by a rustic Plato and apt
to change in a second into quite different forms or even not to exist at all..." p. 87.
"In reality the Princess too had been subject to Tancredi's charm, and she still loved
him; but the pleasure of shouting 'I told you so!' being the strongest any human being
can enjoy, all truths and all feelings were swept along in its wake." p. 94.
"Italy was born on that sullen night at Donnafugata, born right there, in that forgotten
little town, just as much as in the sloth of Palermo ... once could only hope that she
would live on in this form; any other would be worse." p. 105.
"...now [the Prince] knew who had been killed at Donnafugata, at a hundred other
places, in the course of that night of dirty wind: a new born babe: good faith, just the
very child who should have been cared for most ..." p. 106
"As [the Prince] crossed the two rooms preceding the study he tried to imagine
himself as an imposing leopard ... preparing to tear a timid jackal to pieces ..." p. 115
"...free as [Don Calogero] was from the shackles imposed...by honesty, decency and
plain good manners, he moved through the forest of life with the confidence of an
elephant which advances in a straight line, rooting up trees and trampling down lairs,
without even noticing scratches of thorns and moans from the crushed." p. 126
"... [Angelica] had too much pride and too much ambition to be capable of that
annihilation, however temporary, of one's own personality without which there is no
love ..." p. 132
"...[Tancredi felt as if by those kisses he were taking possession of Sicily once more,
of the lovely faithless land which [his family] had lorded over for centuries and which
now, after a vain revolt, had surrendered to him again, as always to his family, its
carnal delights and golden crops." p. 142
"... the pair of them spent those days in dreamy wanderings, in the discovery of hells
redeemed by love, of forgotten paradises profaned by love itself." p. 150
"Flattery always slipped off the Prince like water off leaves in fountains: it is one o f
the advantages enjoyed by men who are at once both proud and used to being so." p.163
"...[Chevalley] found himself pitying this prince without hopes as much as the children
without shoes, the malaria-ridden women, the guilty victims whose names reached his
office every morning; all were equal fundamentally, all were comrades in misfortune
segregated in the same well." p. 170
"'All this shouldn't last; but it will, always; the human always, of course, a century,
two centuries ... and after that it will be different, but worse. We were the Leopards
and Lions; those who'll take our place will be little jackals, hyenas; and the whole lot
of us, Leopards, jackals and sheep, we'll all go on thinking ourselves the salt of the
earth ...'" p. 173.
"...if, as has often happened before, this class were to vanish, an equivalent one would
be formed straight away with the same qualities and the same defects; it might not be
based on blood any more, but possibly ... on, say, the length of time lived in a place, or
on greater knowledge of some text considered sacred." p. 185
"Nobles were reserved and incomprehensible, peasants explicit and clear; but the
Devil twisted them both round his little finger all the same." p. 194
"...[the Prince] felt like a keeper in a zoo looking after some hundred female monkeys;
any moment he expected to see them clamber up the chandeliers and hang there by
their tails, swinging to and fro, showing off their behinds and loosing a stream of nuts,
shrieks and grins at pacific visitors below..." p. 205
"The crowd of dances among whom he could count so many near to him in blood if
not in heart, began to seem unreal, made of the raw material of lapsed memories ..." p.207
"[the Prince] felt his heart thaw; his disgust gave way to compassion for all these
ephemeral beings out to enjoy the tiny ray of light granted them between two shades -
before the cradle, after the last spasms ..." p. 208
"As always the thought of his own death calmed him as much as that of others
disturbed him: was it perhaps because, when all was said and done, his own death
would in the first place mean that of the whole world?" p. 210
"As always seeing [the stars] revived him; they were distant, they were omnipotent
and at the same time they were docile to his calculations; just the contrary to humans,
always too near, so weak and yet so quarrelsome." p. 219
"... this continuous whittling away of his personality seemed linked to a vague presage
of the rebuilding elsewhere of a personality (thanks be to God) less conscious and yet
broader." p. 222.
"[Concetta's] was one of those rooms (so numerous that one might be tempted to say it
of all rooms) which have two faces, one with a mask that they show to ignorant
visitors, the other which is only revealed to those in the know, the owner in particular
to whom all its squalid essence is manifest." p. 242.
"The specters of the past had been exorcised for years; though they were, of course, to
be found hidden in everything, and it was they that made food taste bitter and
company seem boring: but it was a long time since they had shown their true faces;
now they came leaping out, accompanied by the ghastly laughter of irreparable disaster."p 249.
"There had been no enemies, just one single adversary, herself; her future had not
been killed by her own imprudence, but the rash Salina pride; and now, just at the
moment when her memories had come alive again after so many years, she found
herself even without the solace of being able to blame her own unhappiness on others,
a solace which is the last protective device of the desperate." p. 250.
"In a family which for centuries had been incapable even of adding up their own
expenditure and subtracting their own debts [the Prince] was the first (and last) to have
a genuine bent for mathematics; this he had applied to astronomy ... in his mind, now,
pride and mathematical analysis were so linked as to give him an illusion that the stars
obeyed his calculations ..." p. 12
"The Prince put [a rose] under his nose and seemed to be sniffing the thigh of a dancer
from the Opera." p.14
"Dying for somebody or for something, that was perfectly normal, of course: but the
person dying should know, or at least feel sure, that someone knows for whom or for
what he is dying ..." p. 15.
"...Tancredi could never do wrong in his uncle's eyes: so the real fault lay with the
times, these confused times in which a young man of good family wasn't even free to
play a game ... without involving himself with compromising acquaintanceships ..." p.24
"'...seven children I've had with her, seven; and never once have I seen her navel.'"p.27
"... the wealth of centuries had been transmuted into ornament, luxury, pleasure ...
wealth, like an old wine, had left the dregs of greed, even of care, and prudence fall to
the bottom of the barrel, leaving only verve and color ..."p. 33
"...next to the main farm building a deep well ... mutely offered various services: as
swimming pool, drinking trough, prison or cemetery. It slaked thirst, spread typhus,
guarded the kidnapped and hid the corpses both of animals and men till they were
reduced to the smoothest of anonymous skeletons..." p. 50
"The sun ... was showing itself the true ruler of Sicily; the crude brash sun, the
drugging sun, which annulled every will, kept all things in servile immobility, cradled
in violence and arbitrary dreams..." p. 40
"These early morning fantasies were the very worst that could happen to a man of
middle age ... they left a sediment of sorrow which, accumulating day by day, would
in the end be the real cause of his death." p. 56
"A man of forty-five can consider himself still young till the moment comes when he
realizes that he has children old enough to fall in love. The Prince felt old age com
over him in one blow...suddenly he saw himself as a white haired old man walking
beside -herds of grand-children on billy-goats in the public gardens of Villa Giulia."
p.66
"...under her pale blue bodice [Concetta's] heart was being torn to shreds; the violent
Salina blood came surging up in her, and beneath a smooth forehead she found herself
brooding over day-dreams of poisoning ." p. 77
"Donnafugata with its palace and its new rich was only a mile or two away, but
seemed a dim memory like those landscapes sometimes glimpsed at the distant end of
a railway tunnel; its troubles and splendors appeared even more insignificant than if
they belonged to the past, for compared to this remote unchangeable landscape they
seemed part of the future ... extracts from a utopia thought up by a rustic Plato and apt
to change in a second into quite different forms or even not to exist at all..." p. 87.
"In reality the Princess too had been subject to Tancredi's charm, and she still loved
him; but the pleasure of shouting 'I told you so!' being the strongest any human being
can enjoy, all truths and all feelings were swept along in its wake." p. 94.
"Italy was born on that sullen night at Donnafugata, born right there, in that forgotten
little town, just as much as in the sloth of Palermo ... once could only hope that she
would live on in this form; any other would be worse." p. 105.
"...now [the Prince] knew who had been killed at Donnafugata, at a hundred other
places, in the course of that night of dirty wind: a new born babe: good faith, just the
very child who should have been cared for most ..." p. 106
"As [the Prince] crossed the two rooms preceding the study he tried to imagine
himself as an imposing leopard ... preparing to tear a timid jackal to pieces ..." p. 115
"...free as [Don Calogero] was from the shackles imposed...by honesty, decency and
plain good manners, he moved through the forest of life with the confidence of an
elephant which advances in a straight line, rooting up trees and trampling down lairs,
without even noticing scratches of thorns and moans from the crushed." p. 126
"... [Angelica] had too much pride and too much ambition to be capable of that
annihilation, however temporary, of one's own personality without which there is no
love ..." p. 132
"...[Tancredi felt as if by those kisses he were taking possession of Sicily once more,
of the lovely faithless land which [his family] had lorded over for centuries and which
now, after a vain revolt, had surrendered to him again, as always to his family, its
carnal delights and golden crops." p. 142
"... the pair of them spent those days in dreamy wanderings, in the discovery of hells
redeemed by love, of forgotten paradises profaned by love itself." p. 150
"Flattery always slipped off the Prince like water off leaves in fountains: it is one o f
the advantages enjoyed by men who are at once both proud and used to being so." p.163
"...[Chevalley] found himself pitying this prince without hopes as much as the children
without shoes, the malaria-ridden women, the guilty victims whose names reached his
office every morning; all were equal fundamentally, all were comrades in misfortune
segregated in the same well." p. 170
"'All this shouldn't last; but it will, always; the human always, of course, a century,
two centuries ... and after that it will be different, but worse. We were the Leopards
and Lions; those who'll take our place will be little jackals, hyenas; and the whole lot
of us, Leopards, jackals and sheep, we'll all go on thinking ourselves the salt of the
earth ...'" p. 173.
"...if, as has often happened before, this class were to vanish, an equivalent one would
be formed straight away with the same qualities and the same defects; it might not be
based on blood any more, but possibly ... on, say, the length of time lived in a place, or
on greater knowledge of some text considered sacred." p. 185
"Nobles were reserved and incomprehensible, peasants explicit and clear; but the
Devil twisted them both round his little finger all the same." p. 194
"...[the Prince] felt like a keeper in a zoo looking after some hundred female monkeys;
any moment he expected to see them clamber up the chandeliers and hang there by
their tails, swinging to and fro, showing off their behinds and loosing a stream of nuts,
shrieks and grins at pacific visitors below..." p. 205
"The crowd of dances among whom he could count so many near to him in blood if
not in heart, began to seem unreal, made of the raw material of lapsed memories ..." p.207
"[the Prince] felt his heart thaw; his disgust gave way to compassion for all these
ephemeral beings out to enjoy the tiny ray of light granted them between two shades -
before the cradle, after the last spasms ..." p. 208
"As always the thought of his own death calmed him as much as that of others
disturbed him: was it perhaps because, when all was said and done, his own death
would in the first place mean that of the whole world?" p. 210
"As always seeing [the stars] revived him; they were distant, they were omnipotent
and at the same time they were docile to his calculations; just the contrary to humans,
always too near, so weak and yet so quarrelsome." p. 219
"... this continuous whittling away of his personality seemed linked to a vague presage
of the rebuilding elsewhere of a personality (thanks be to God) less conscious and yet
broader." p. 222.
"[Concetta's] was one of those rooms (so numerous that one might be tempted to say it
of all rooms) which have two faces, one with a mask that they show to ignorant
visitors, the other which is only revealed to those in the know, the owner in particular
to whom all its squalid essence is manifest." p. 242.
"The specters of the past had been exorcised for years; though they were, of course, to
be found hidden in everything, and it was they that made food taste bitter and
company seem boring: but it was a long time since they had shown their true faces;
now they came leaping out, accompanied by the ghastly laughter of irreparable disaster."p 249.
"There had been no enemies, just one single adversary, herself; her future had not
been killed by her own imprudence, but the rash Salina pride; and now, just at the
moment when her memories had come alive again after so many years, she found
herself even without the solace of being able to blame her own unhappiness on others,
a solace which is the last protective device of the desperate." p. 250.