Today the two cities seem to stand in contrast to each another. Florence has become a bustling and vital modern city. Whilst it ma...y no longer nurture Michelangelos and Botticellis, there are native Florentine painters of international renown. Its ancient craft of leatherwork plays a distinctive role in contemporary fashion, and Florentines have effectively revived the old skills with stuffs and dyes and organized their distribution on a scale which dwarfs the network of the once ubiquitous Medici banks. Venice instead is apparently a city belonging only to her past, an empty shell of former glories. Its native population diminishes constantly, deserting the island for the industrial wasteland that threatens to destroy what is left of millennial grandeur. Its last remaining industry makes baubles for the tourists who come in droves to stay on a statistical average of eighteen hours, to mill about and to gawk at the remaining relics of the Seremissima's magnificence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I used to worship the mighty genius of Michael Angelo--that man who was great in poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture--great ...in every thing he undertook. But I do not want Michael Angelo for breakfast--for luncheon--for dinner--for tea--for supper--for between meals. I like a change, occasionally. In Genoa, he designed every thing; in Milan he or his pupils designed every thing; he designed the Lake of Como; in Padua, Verona, Venice, Bologna, who did we ever hear of, from guides, but Michael Angelo? In Florence, he painted every thing, designed every thing, nearly, and what he didn't design he used to sit on a favorite stone and look at, and they showed us the stone. In Pisa he designed everything but the old shot-tower, and they would have attributed that to him if it had not been so awfully out of the perpendicular. He designed the piers of Leghorn and the custom house regulations of Civita Vecchia. But, here--here it is frightful. He designed St. Peter's; he designed the Pope; he designed the Pantheon, the uniform of the Pope's soldiers, the Tiber, the Vatican, the Coliseum, the Capitol, the Tarpeian Rock, the Barberini Palace, St. John Lateran, the Campagna, the Appian Way, the Seven Hills, the Baths of Caracalla, the Claudian Aqueduct, the Cloaca Maxima--the eternal bore designed the Eternal City, and unless all men and books do lie, he painted every thing in it!... I never felt so fervently thankful, so soothed, so tranquil, so filled with a blessed peace, as I did yesterday when I learned that Michael Angelo was dead.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Oh the rose, the rose, the gentle rose, And the fennel that grows so green!... God give us grace in every place To pray for our king and queen.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The value of old age depends upon the person who reaches it. To some men of early performance it is useless. To others, who are la...te to develop, it just enables them to finish the job.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My weakness has always been to prefer the large intention of an unskilful artist to the trivial intention of an accomplished one: ...in other words, I am more interested in the high ideas of a feeble executant than in the high execution of a feeble thinker.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Pessimism ... is, in brief, playing the sure game. You cannot lose at it; you may gain. It is the only view of life in which you c...an never be disappointed. Having reckoned what to do in the worst possible circumstances, when better arise, as they may, life becomes child's play.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If all hearts were open and all desires known--as they would be if people showed their souls--how many gapings, sighings, clenched... fists, knotted brows, broad grins, and red eyes should we see in the market-place!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »