Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa quotes

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa was an Italian writer, best known for his novel "The Leopard." This work is considered one of the great masterpieces of twentieth-century Italian literature. He gained international recognition posthumously for his evocative depiction of Sicilian aristocracy and social change. Here are 14 of his quotes:

A house of which one knew every room wasn't worth living in.

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Love. Of course, love. Flames for a year, ashes for thirty.

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.

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.

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.

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

The young feel sorrows much more sharply that the old; the latter are nearer the safety exit.

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.

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Perhaps the greatest novel of the century.

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.

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

To rage and mock is gentlemanly, to grumble and whine is not.

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?

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.

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa