Their smiles and laughter are due to their habit of thinking pleasurably aloud about the pleasures of life. They have humanity rather than humour, and the real significance of the distinction is seldom understood. – Luigi Barzini
To put up a show is to face lifes injustices with one of the few weapons available to a desperate and brave people, their imagination. – Luigi Barzini
They eat the dainty food of famous chefs with the same pleasure with which they devour gross peasant dishes, mostly composed of garlic and tomatoes, or fishermans octopus and shrimps, fried in heavily scented olive oil on a little deserted beach. – Luigi Barzini
Foreign diplomats in Rome disconsolately say, Italy is the opposite of Russia. In Moscow nothing is known, yet everything is clear. In Rome everything is public, there are no secrets, everybody talks, things are at times flamboyantly enacted, yet one understands nothing. – Luigi Barzini
Mark how fleeting and paltry is the estate of man–yesterday in embryo, tomorrow a mummy or ashes. So for the hairsbreadth of time assigned to thee, live rationally, and part with life cheerfully, as drops the ripe olive, extolling the season that bore it and the tree that matured it. – Marcus Antonius