Wanted: Poetic line(s) about Florence
 

I am finally able to edit the video I took of our trip to Rome and Florence. I would love to end with a beautiful (or funny) quotation or line of poetry. Can anyone assist?

I would like something about Florence, but Italy in general would be good, too. Or maybe travel?

Thank you in advance for your ideas,
Linda

“You may have the universe if I may have Italy”
Giuseppe Verdi

“A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority, from his not having seen what it is expected a man should see”
Samuel Johnson

Quant'e bella govinezza,
Che si fugge tuttavia!
Chi vuol'esser lieto, sia;
Di doman non c'e certezza.

Lorenzo de' Medici

Thanks very much - some lovely thoughts. But . . . marginal . . . can you give me a translation of that one?

In Paris, you learn wit, in London you learn to crush your social rivals, and in Florence you learn poise.
Virgil Thomson

"Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city."

~ Anatole Broyard, NY Times 25 Mar 74

Anatole was from my town and I was a big fan of his when he wrote reviews for the NYTimes book review.
But I'm sure I read that quote about Paris. Does anyone know the true author?

Michaelangelo was a poet as well as a sculptor. He wrote these lines:

Even at this later hour, you succeed in making me blest,
Me, to wretchedness born.

These are not specifically about Firenze. Take your pick:

"Open My Heart and You Will See Engraved Inside of It, Italy…"
Robert Browining

“You may have the universe, if I may have Italy.” Guiseppe Verdi

“Venice: Streets full of water. Please advise.” Robert Benchley to his editor.

“Wherever you go…there you are. Venice.”

“Travel like Ghandi…with simple clothes, open eyes, and an uncluttered mind.”

“Travel spoils you for regular life.”

“To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.” Aldous Huxley

“Many a trip continues long after time in movement have ceased.” John Steinbeck

“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” Robert Louis Stevenson

“If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion, and avoid the people, you might better stay home." James Michener

“If you don't enjoy a place, maybe you don't know enough about it."

“Give a culture the benefit of your open mind. See things different, but not better or worse. Any culture has much to share." Unknown

“The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.” Saint Augustine


"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream." Mark Twain

”A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Lao-tzu

“In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed—and they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace—and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock” - Orson Wells

“Traveling is the ruin of happiness. There’s no looking at a building here after seeing Italy!” - Fanny Burney

“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.” -
Mark Twain

“A wise traveler never despises his own country.” - William Hazlitt

“It is good to trust, but it is better not to trust.” old Roman proberb

“In this country, only the monuments survive.” - Actress Anna Magnani

“Roma, non basta una vita!” (“Rome, a lifetime is not enough!”)
old Roman proverb

“O Rome! My country! City of the soul!” Lord Byron

“Italia! O Italia! Thou who hast the fatal gift of beauty.” Lord Byron

Somewhere between heaven and earth lies Italy…

“My soul can find no staircase to heaven unless it be through this land’s loveliness.”
— MICHELANGELO

Italian poetry for Dummies:

How beautiful is youth
That is fleeting all the same!
May he who would be joyful, be so;
Of tomorrow there is no certainty.

Lorenzo's "gather ye rosebuds" sentiment.

Perhaps this site can help you. It's dedicated to quotations about Italy. Here's the URL:

http://www.giga-usa.com/quotes/topics/italy_t001.htm

Thank you all so much - I knew I could rely on you!

And, sssteve, thanks for the website. Now I just have to pick one (or two)!

It's a lot like dying...leaving a place like Italy. (from a travel blog)

The charm of Italy is akin to that of being in love
--Stendhal

So blessed with natural beauties and riches that it is clear that when Nature formed it she took delight in accumulating all her blessings in a single spot.
--Pliny