Pitigrilli

“[T]he distance between sympathy and sensuality is as short as that which separates those two words in the dictionary.”

“When I was twenty they told me to swear loyalty to the King, a person who acts in the capacity because his father and grandfather did the same before him. I took the oath because they forced my to, otherwise I wouldn't have done it. Then they sent me to kill people I didn't know who were dressed rather like I was. One day they said to me: "Look, there's one of your enemies, fire at him," and I fired, but missed. But he fired and wounded me. I don't know why they said it was a glorious wound.”

“Mysticism was merely virility in a state of liquidation; sperm that had gone bad.”

““Andiamo meglio?" domandò il medico illustre prendendo il polso di Tito. “Andiamo meglio?”. {{pb}} "Sì. Andiamo.” {{pb}} E spirò.”

“I met two or three men who were very kind to me. There was a magistrate who couldn't stand priests, and a priest who didn't have a good word to say for magistrates; and there was a landlord who let furnished rooms by the hour and spoke highly of both priests and magistrates, because both were his best clients.”

“The alcoholic retains the ability to condemn his addiction and advise those not subject to it to avoid succumbing to the liquid poison. But the cocaine addict likes proselytizing; thus, instead of constituting a tangible warning, every victim of the drug acts as a source of infection.”

“A man tells you the most interesting things he knows during the first half hour he talks to you; after that he either repeats himself or offers you variations on the same theme.”

“Conferences are assemblies of people who argue about how to conduct an argument and end by sending a telegram of congratulation to the minister.”

“I've come to see that competitors are necessary to those who want to get on in the world. Opposition is indispensable to success.”

“I work because I need to have two thousand francs in my pocket every month, but I have no desire to glorify work either by enthusiasm or envy or emulation. Life is a mere waiting room in which we spend time before entering into the void. Who would think of working in a waiting room? While awaiting our turn we chat, we look at the pictures on the walls. But work? There is no point in it, if when our turn comes to go into the next room we shall no longer see anything.”

“All those people who dance in basements to harrow each other's nerve endings think and they're enjoying themselves don't realise in their frenzy that they are passive instruments in the hands of nature, which provides them with the excitement of the dance in the interest of the reproduction of the species.”

“We have to defend views we don't share and impose them on the public; deal with questions we don't understand and vulgarize them for the gallery. We can't have ideas of our own, we have to have those of the editor; and even the editor doesn't have the right to think with his own head, because when he's sent for by the board of directors he has to stifle his own views, if he has any, and support those of the shareholders.”

“The height of perfection is mediocrity.”

“The mob loves those who amuse and serve it. But to amuse it you have to love it. I love no one, least of all the mob, because the mob, the multitude, are like women: they betray those who love them.”

“No, I don't want to commit suicide, but I should like to fade away and die gently. To depart from life as one gets out of a bath.”

“Women are like posters. One is stuck on top of another and covers it completely. Perhaps just for a moment, when the paste is still soft and the paper still wet and slightly transparent, you may still catch a vague impression of the splashes of color of the first, but soon there's no more trace of it. Then, when the second one is removed, both come away together, leaving your memory and your heart as blank as a wall.”

“Egli sapeva che le fanciulle cominciano con un ritardo di cinque minuti e finisco con i ritardi di quindici giorni e anche più. Tutta la morale sessuale non tende, in fondo, che a scongiurare, nelle fanciulle, il pericolo dei 'ritardi'.”

“Not having a moustache, he was in the habit of twirling his eyebrows. “Why do you keep twirling your eyebrows?” a young lady asked him one day. “We all twirl the hairs we have, depending on our age and sex,” Tito replied. The young lady thought him very witty and fell in love with him.”

“Nel collegio dei Barnabiti aveva imparato il latino, a servir messa ed a giurare il falso. Tre cose di cui si può aver bisogno da un momento all'altro. {{pb}} Ma uscendo dal collegio le dimenticò tutte e tre. Studiò medicina per alcuni anni; ma all'esame di patologia chirurgica gli dissero: «Non posso permetterle di dare l'esame con la caramella all'occhio. O si toglie la caramella o non dà l'esame» {{pb}} «Ebbene, io non dò l'esame» rispose Tito alzandosi. E rinunziò alla laurea.”