"Old Italian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the shining river, and then to open out into a long corridor, dark walled and paved with silver. There was a lake with an island and a pavilion: Iona Island—too beautiful to pass as we did pass; a bridge over a steep rocky gorge, and a river-glimpse mysterious as the backgrounds of old Italian pictures. But we turned away from it into woods—deep forests of cedars fragrant as smoking incense, and at last—rather late because of side wanderings—we ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... so, that many who have shown exceptional ability for this kind of work have achieved a reputation for it alone, among the large circle of dealers in the principal cities of Europe. The necessities of the time have thus brought into prominence a modification of the art of the old Italian liutaro, in which there has to be displayed much more mechanical ingenuity if with very little or no originality; the high class of artisan has become strongly in evidence, while the artist has disappeared. It was in the consideration ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... stand rigid, vacant, against their blue nowhere of background, with vague expanses of pink face looking neither one way nor the other; mere modernized copies of the strange, goggle-eyed, vapid beings on the old Italian mosaics. This is not a representation of the actual reality of the crucifixion, like Tintoret's superb picture at S. Rocco, or Duerer's print, or so many others, which show the hill, the people, the hangman, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... she said, "Citronella and Stegomyia weren't Italian lovers THEMSELVES. But so many of the old Italian poets have written about them that I always think of them as glowing stars in that wonderful, ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... the old Italian masters has taken such a firm hold upon the popular imagination as Raphael. Other artists wax and wane in public favor as they are praised by one generation of critics or disparaged by the next; but Raphael's name continues to stand in public estimation as that of the favorite painter ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... Raymond VII., Count of Toulouse. It was renouncing, in fact, if not in law, the practical independence of the papacy to thus place it in the midst of the dominions and under the very thumb of the King of France. "I know the Gaseous," said the old Italian Cardinal Matthew Rosso, dean of the Sacred College, when he heard of this resolution; "it will be long ere the Church comes back to Italy." And, indeed, it was not until sixty years afterwards, under Pope Gregory XI., that Italy ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Mr. Richard Bagot's new novel is laid partly in England and partly in Italy. The story turns upon the double life led by a wealthy English landowner in consequence of the abduction in his more youthful days of the daughter of an old Italian house at a period when he had no prospect of succeeding to the position he subsequently attained. Incidentally, the novel deals with certain phases of Italian Spiritualism, and Mr. Bagot's readers will again resume their acquaintance with some of ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... acquainted with the old Italian peasant woman, bowed beneath a bundle, who was the next he would have to confront, being out of the question, he resolved to side-step destiny by slipping out of the main path and following a branch one. ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... Every old Italian city has this awe about it—holds close the past and moves the living to a curious sense that they are dead and in their graves are dreaming; for the old cities themselves have beheld so much perish around them, and yet have kept ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... to the higher orders, at that time, was carried to such a height that it wrought its own cure. It was usual at the old Italian Opera-house to allot a gallery to the footmen, that when their masters or mistresses had appointed the time to leave the theatre, their servants might be ready to attend. But these livery-men took it into their heads to become critics upon the performances, and delivered their ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... on the bench. She was quite young—not more than twenty at the outside—and there was something in the dark, slender beauty of her which seemed to harmonise with the southern scents and colour of the old Italian garden. She sat very still, her round white chin cupped in her palm. Her eyes were downcast, the lowered lids, with their lashes lying like dusky fans against the ivory-tinted skin beneath, ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... before the gates of Church and State, on his way to his uncle's Club. He stopped to telegraph to Audrey the time he would be coming to-morrow afternoon; and on leaving the Post-Office, noticed in the window of the adjoining shop some reproductions of old Italian masterpieces, amongst them one of Botticelli's 'Birth of Venus.' He had never seen that picture; and, remembering that she had told him it was her favourite, he stopped to look at it. Averagely well versed in such matters, as became one of his caste, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of music. I compare a good melodist to a fine racer, and counterpointists to hack post-horses; therefore be advised, let well alone and remember the old Italian proverb: Chi sa piu, meno sa—'Who knows most, ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... that Maggie, one day, long before, and under her own attendance precisely, had, for the glory of the name she bore, paid a visit to one of the ampler shrines of the supreme exhibitory temple, an alcove of shelves charged with the gold-and-brown, gold-and-ivory, of old Italian bindings and consecrated to the records of the Prince's race. It had been an impression that penetrated, that remained; yet Maggie had sighed, ever so prettily, at its having to be so superficial. She was to go back some day, to dive deeper, to linger and taste; in spite of which, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... left Florence on the 11th, and have been here these three days. Delightful old Italian town—but it lacks the ...
— The Diary of a Man of Fifty • Henry James
... the same curious, half-wistful poise among all the conflicts of principle and passion around him, as among those of which he read and mused. If you ask why this was so—how it was that the tragedy of an old Italian garden, or the sin of a lonely Puritan parish, or the crime of a provincial judge, should so stimulate his imagination with romantic appeals and harrowing allegories, while either it did not see a Carolina slave-pen, or found in it only a tame prosperity—you ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... highway, each weighed and balanced the other, even as they talked aloud of the Academy School, and the pupils, and the dear old Professor whom they both loved. They discussed the prospect of its doors being opened the next winter. They talked of Mrs. Mulligan, and the old Italian who sold peanuts, and whose head Margaret had painted; and of Jack Bedford and Fred Stone—the dearest fellow in the world—and last year's pictures—especially Church's "Niagara," the sensation of the year, and Whittredge's "Mountain Brook," and every other subject ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... The hour is reckoned, according to the old Italian fashion, from sunset of one day to ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... mountaineers, although numerically weak, proved themselves worthy of their ancient fame.—The four Waldstaette were thrown into one canton, Waldstaetten; Glarus and Toggenburg into another, Linth; Appenzell and St. Gall into that of Saentis. The old Italian prefectures, with the exception of the Valtelline, were formed into two cantons, Lugano and Bellinzona (afterward the canton of Tessin). The canton of Vaud also finally acceded to this arrangement, but was shortly ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... girl, in a remote Yorkshire parsonage, who has probably never seen anything worthy the name of a painting in her life studying the names and characteristics of the great old Italian and Flemish masters, whose works she longs to see some time, in the dim future that lies before her! There is a paper remaining which contains minute studies of, and criticisms upon, the engravings in "Friendship's Offering for 1829," showing ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... vases. Though universally denominated a dolphin, I nevertheless call this book-binder's fish an attempt at a whale; because it was so intended when the device was first introduced. It was introduced by an old Italian publisher somewhere about the 15th century, during the Revival of Learning; and in those days, and even down to a comparatively late period, dolphins were popularly supposed to be a species of ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... as well as theoretical. But this confusion of methods is only on the surface. All teachers draw the materials of their methods from the same sources. An outline of the history of Voice Culture, including the rise of the old Italian school and the development of Vocal Science, will render the present situation in the vocal profession ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... there was a heavy carved book-case, with glass doors, and a general impression of faded sofa covers, large spaces of pale green, and baskets with pieces of wool-work dropping out of them. Photographs from old Italian masterpieces hung on the walls, and views of Venetian bridges and Swedish waterfalls which members of the family had seen years ago. There were also one or two portraits of fathers and grandmothers, and an engraving of John Stuart Mill, after the ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... boy," she said, coming a little nearer, "I don't think the worse of you for that. On the contrary, I admire your pluck and your brave attitude towards life. Indeed I do. I respect you for it. Do you remember the old Italian story of Ser Federigo and his falcon? How he hid his poverty like a knightly gentleman? You see what I mean, don't you? You ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... there were flowers, and jugs, bright-glancing, And old Italian swords — and looks, A moment's glance of fire, of fire, Spiring, leaping, flaming higher, Into the intense, the cloudless blue, Until two souls were one, and flame, And very flesh, and yet the same! As if all springs were crushed anew Into one globed drop of dew! But for the ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... amid cypress-groves, makes a sudden curve, and we see all of a sudden the grand old Italian-looking city, its watch- towers, palaces, and battlements pencilled in delicate gray against a warm amber sky, only the cypresses by the water's edge making dark points in the picture. Far away, over against the city towers, the stately snow-crowned ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... when, after a tour of the world that had begun from the San Francisco side, Polly Seward and her mother and Senator Seward reached Naples. There Senator Seward bought old Italian furniture for his office on the twenty-fifth floor of the perfectly new Seward building. Mrs. Seward tried to buy for Polly a prince nearly as old as the furniture, and Polly bought picture post-cards which ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... in early boyhood, and began to consort with women at fifteen, yet remained sexually vigorous in old age, while he knew others who began intercourse late and were losing force at forty. Mantegazza, who knew a man who had intercourse fourteen times in one day, remarks that the stories of the old Italian novelists show that twelve times was regarded as a rare exception. Burchard, Alexander VI's secretary, states that the Florentine Ambassador's son, in Rome in 1489, "knew a girl seven times in one hour" (J. Burchard, Diarium, ed. Thuasne, vol. i, p. 329). Olivier, Charlemagne's knight, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Pasquale's dinner, where there was always sport to be had in chasing the rats that overran the place, fighting for the scraps and bones the trimmers had rescued from the scows. There were so many of them, and so bold were they, that an old Italian who could no longer dig, was employed to sit on a bale of rags and throw things at them, lest they carry off the whole establishment. When he hit one, the rest squealed and scampered away; but they were back again in a minute, and the old man had his hands full ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis |
