Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa quotes

If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change. (Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa)
A house of which one knew every room wasn't worth living in. View quote
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Love. Of course, love. Flames for a year, ashes for thirty. View quote
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
What would the Senate do with me, an inexperienced legislator who lacks the faculty of self-deception, essential requisite for anyone wanting to guide others. View quote
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
His great novel The Leopard (Il Gattopardo) has certainly enlarged my life – an unusual experience for a life which is well on in its eighties. Reading and rereading it has made me realize how many ways there are of being alive, how many doors there are, close to one, which someone else's touch may open. View quote
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
No nineteenth-century writer could have written this nineteenth-century tale; but few twentieth-century writers could have handled its simplicities in the way this one does. View quote
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
The young feel sorrows much more sharply that the old; the latter are nearer the safety exit. View quote
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
When a peasant gives me his bit of cheese he's making me a bigger present than the Prince of Làscari when he invites me to dinner. That's obvious. The difficulty is that the cheese is nauseating. So all that remains is the heart's gratitude which can't be seen and the nose wrinkled in disgust which can be seen only too well. View quote
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Perhaps the greatest novel of the century. View quote
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
We were the Leopards, the 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. View quote
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
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, the 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. (Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa)
To rage and mock is gentlemanly, to grumble and whine is not. View quote
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
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? View quote
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
There is no need to tell you that the 'Prince of Salina' is the Prince Lampedusa, my great-grandfather Giulio Fabrizio. View quote
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa