ROME QUOTES
quotations about Rome
I know not why any one but a schoolboy in his declamation should whine over the Commonwealth of Rome, which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind. The Romans, like others, as soon as they grew rich, grew corrupt; and in their corruption sold the lives and freedoms of themselves, and of one another.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
"of memoirs of the court of Augustus", The Works of Samuel Johnson
For someone who has never seen Rome, it is hard to believe how beautiful life can be.
ANONYMOUS
Rome B.C.
Brutality
The arena of carnage and sin
Man and beast
Kill again
Everybody is going insane...
Hail Caesar...
SOULFLY
"Gladiator"
Autumn in Rome
My heart remembers fountains where children played
Gardens where dreams were made
Autumn in Rome
Memories like embers glow
When I seem to hear walks beneath the pines that grace the golden sky
Stopping now and then to share a lover's sigh, you and I
Let winter come
All my Decembers I'll spend just dreaming of the way we fell in love
One lovely Autumn in Rome
PEGGY LEE
"Autumn in Rome"
Rome is the city of echoes, the city of illusions, and the city of yearning.
JUDITH WORKS
City of Illusions
All roads lead to Rome.
ROMAN PROVERB
Rome wasn't built in a day.
JOHN HEYWOOD
A Dialogue Containing the Number in Effect of all the Proverbs in the English Tongue
Rome: the city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch
We like to imagine Roman civilization falling to sweaty barbarians storming the gates of the city and slaughtering the citizens while they took refuge in the temples of the gods, but it didn't happen like that. The Roman people, in the end, simply decided that they would rather have food than freedom.
PHILIP FREEMAN
"Rome Had Caesar. America Has Trump. The People Were and Are Desperate.", Huffington Post, November 10, 2016
Rome is a very loony city in every respect. One needs but spend an hour or two there to realize that Fellini makes documentaries.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
Metropolitan Life
Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.
G. K. CHESTERTON
Orthodoxy
If I write happily, "Best wishes from Napoli,"
Don't cable me snappily to tell me we're through,
'Cause once again in Rome, in somebody's den in Rome
Well pussycat, when in Rome, I do as the Romans,
Disregard the signs and the omens,
When in Rome I do as the Romans do.
TONY BENNETT
"When In Rome"
I have not been three days at Rome. How charming are the Italian women! Nature seems here to have concentrated all her beauties. In other countries she has bestow'd only one feature; but in Rome the countenance is perfect. There she has given souls without bodies; here they both exist in the same being.
WASHINGTON ALLSTON
letter from Rome, October 1800
Rome is a city of ruins. Ruins are to Rome what canals are to Venice, and while other cities build over their past, Rome builds around it. My neighborhood, Testaccio, is mainly made up of nineteenth century apartment blocks, and it seems almost modern compared to the crumbling centro storico. But on one otherwise ordinary street, a stretch of Roman wall rises out of the ground like the back of a sea monster. The contrast between the modern apartments and the ancient wall is startling when you see it for the first time, but locals walk past without giving it a second glance. It's just the remains of a 2,000 year old port -- no big deal.
ALEXANDRA TURNEY
"Exploring the ruins of Rome", L'Italo-Americano, February 20, 2016
Rome has grown since its humble beginnings that it is now overwhelmed by its own greatness.
LIVY
attributed, Economics in Ancient Times
Rome wasn't deconstructed in a day.
EDWARD ST. AUBYN
Lost for Words
The first time I saw her
She was wearing scarves of white
That little spark between us
Took only seconds to ignite
And then it occured to me
But suddenly I was standing there alone
On the Spanish steps of Rome
TOTO
"Spanish Steps of Rome"
Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city.
ANATOLE BROYARD
New York Times, March 24, 1974
Rome, Rome, thou art no more
As thou hast been!
On thy seven hills of yore
Thou sat'st a queen.
FELICIA HEMANS
Roman Girl's Song
In an empire as unruly as Rome, it is quite easy to get away with something as thespian as murder.
KATLYN CHARLESWORTH
While Rome Burned