Naples Quotes

Traveling is a fool's paradise... I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there besides me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
All things in Naples are arranged with as much civility as possible. View quote
Norman Lewis
What I like so much about Corot is that he can say everything with a bit of tree; and it was Corot himself that I found [back] in the museum of Naples – in the simplicity of the work of Pompeii and the Egyptians. These priestesses in their silver-grey tunics are just like Corot's nymphs. View quote
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Naples is extraordinary in every way. View quote
Norman Lewis
I speak a little bit of Italian, yeah. I understand more than I speak. I speak more of a dialect; my mum's from Naples and my dad's from Sicily, so it comes out little a bit of a cocktail of the Italian language. View quote
Luke Pasqualino
Technically, I'm a knight. My family goes back a thousand years in the Naples area. We're a titled, noble people. View quote
Paul Sorvino
I have a concept of Naples that is not so much of a city, per se, but rather an ingredient of the human spirit that I detect in everyone, Neapolitan or not. The idea that 'Neapolitanism' and mass ignorance are somehow indissolubly linked is one that I am prepared to fight with all the strength I have. View quote
Luciano De Crescenzo
Please go to this pizzeria. Order the margherita pizza with double mozzarella. If you do not eat this pizza when you are in Naples, please lie to me and tell me that you did. View quote
Elizabeth Gilbert
There were times, especially when I was traveling for 'Eat, Pray, Love,' when, I swear to God, I would feel this weight of my female ancestors, all those Swedish farmwives from beyond the grave who were like, 'Go! Go to Naples! Eat more pizza! Go to India, ride an elephant! Do it! Swim in the Indian Ocean. Read those books. Learn a language.' View quote
Elizabeth Gilbert
I am thinking of painting for the coming Salon a picture [probably the large and unfinished painting 'Botzaris' by Delacroix] whose subject I shall take from the recent wars between the Turks and the Greeks. I think that.... this would be a way to attract some attention. I should therefore like you to send me some drawings of the country round Naples, a few quick sketches of seascapes or picturesque mountain sites... Why not also send a few of the studies you have in your portfolio? You don't need them while you are out there, and it would oblige you to make some more of them. View quote
Eugène Delacroix
As Malaparte saw it, Naples was a pagan city with an ancient sense of time. Christianity taught those who were converted to it to think of history as the unfolding of a single plot – a moral drama of sin and redemption. In the ancient world there was no such plot – only a multitude of stories that were forever being repeated. Inhabiting that ancient world, the Neapolitans did not expect any fundamental alteration in human affairs. Not having accepted the Christian story of redemption, they had not been seduced by the myth of progress. Never having believed civilization to be permanent, they were not surprised when it foundered. (John N. Gray)
Let us watch this de Kooning [leading Abstract-Expressionist painter in New York] with his prematurely white hair making his great sleepwalker's movements, as though he was waiting in a dream to open bays of Biscay, to explode islands like pieces of orange or Parma violets, to tear continents from a cerulean blue split by oceans of Naples yellow.... if by good or by ill fortune, in the middle of this Dionysian demiurg the image of 'The Eternal Feminine should appear.. the least that might have happened to her would be that she should emerge (from all this chaos) wearing nothing but a little make-up. View quote
Salvador Dalí
You are speaking before a man to whom all Naples is known. View quote
Molière
On countless occasions during my spell as an assistant in Naples I heard people say about some newspaper or other: è pagato, it's paid for, it lies for its client, and then on the following day these very same people who had cried pagato were absolutely convinced by some obviously bogus piece of news in the same paper. Because it was printed in such bold type, and because the other people believed it. ... I also know that a part of every intellectual's soul belongs to the people, that all my awareness of being lied to, and my critical attentiveness, are of no avail when it comes to it: at some point the printed lie will get the better of me when it attacks from all sides and is queried by fewer and fewer around me and finally by no one at all. View quote
Victor Klemperer
Nothing, absolutely nothing that can be tackled by the human digestive system is wasted in Naples. View quote
Norman Lewis
He proved to be one of the four thousand lawyers of Naples, ninety per cent of whom – surplus to the needs of the courts – had never practised, and who for the most part lived in extreme penury. View quote
Norman Lewis
If it is a fact that in Naples everything is for sale, how much more true must this be in Poggio Reale? View quote
Norman Lewis
There is an inherent Mediterranean austerity much in evidence in the Naples area, in Sorrento and Capri, which seems to come from the sea, since it is hardly to be found inland. View quote
Norman Lewis
I like to dress up in a tailored suit from time to time, and there's a tailor I go to in Naples who's fantastic. But if I told anyone his name, I'd have to kill them. View quote
Hugh Jackman
I think that my interpretation of Italian was a lot more southern than what my husband cooks. You know, I grew up in Queens and in Brooklyn, and we - really, it's more southern. It's Naples and Sicily. It's heavier. It's over-spiced. And like most Americans, I thought spaghetti and meatballs was genius. View quote
Debi Mazar
I had always sung, as far back as I can remember, for the pure love of it. My voice was contralto, and I sang in a church in Naples from fourteen till I was eighteen. (Enrico Caruso)
Put a compass to paper and trace a circle. Then tell me which other country has such a concentration of places like Amalfi, Naples, Ischia, Procida, Sorrento, Positano, Pompeii, and Capri. View quote
Diego Della Valle
My grandfather's family used to own a pasta factory in Naples and they would go door-to-door selling their pasta. So his love of food came from his parents, which was then passed down to my mother and then again to me. View quote
Giada De Laurentiis
I spent time at my grandfather Dino's gourmet store where he brought in chefs from Naples to cook. I thought of them as rock stars. View quote
Giada De Laurentiis
I'm from Naples. I was born in a poor neighborhood and I always, in my heart, felt like it would be amazing to be able to adopt a child from Naples. I could give someone the opportunity I had. I would love to give back in that way and pay it forward. View quote
Giuliana Rancic