Giuseppe Mazzini Quotes - Page 2

Poetry is enthusiasm with wings of fire; it is the angel of high thoughts, that inspires us with the power of sacrifice.

Liberty, understood by materialists as the right to do or not to do anything not directly injurious to others, we understand as the faculty of choosing, among the various modes of fulfilling duty, those most in harmony with our own tendencies.

The great men of the earth are but the marking-stones on the road of humanity; they are the priests of its religion.

Art does not imitate, but interpret.

God holds with the strong.

The obscurest sayings of the truly great are often those which contain the germ of the profoundest and most useful truths.

The republic, as I at least understand it, means association, of which liberty is only an element, a necessary antecedent. It means association, a new philosophy of life, a divine Ideal that shall move the world, the only means of regeneration vouchsafed to the human race.

The theory of rights enables us to rise and overthrow obstacles, but not to found a strong and lasting accord between all the elements which compose the nation.

Slumber not in the tents of your fathers. The world is advancing.

The family is the country of the heart.

Every mission constitutes a pledge of duty. Every man is bound to consecrate his every faculty to its fulfilment. He will derive his rule of action from the profound conviction of that duty.

Constancy is the complement of all the other human virtues.

Every Age has its own peculiar faith. Any attempt to translate into facts the mission of one Age with the machinery of another, can only end in an indefinite series of abortive efforts. Defeated by the utter want of proportion between the means and the end, such attempts might produce martyrs, but never lead to victory.

Insurrection by means of guerrilla bands is the true method of warfare for all nations desirous of emancipating themselves from a foreign yoke. It is invincible, indestructible.

To be mistaken is a misfortune to be pitied; but to know the truth and not to conform one's actions to it is a crime which Heaven and Earth condemn.

Men of great genius and large heart sow the seeds of a new degree of progress in the world, but they bear fruit only after many years.

God has given you your country as cradle, and humanity as mother; you cannot rightly love your brethren of the cradle if you love not the common mother.

Ideas grow quickly when watered with the blood of martyrs.

In ourselves, rather than in material nature, lie the true source and life of the beautiful. The human soul is the sun which diffuses light on every side, investing creation with its lovely hues, and calling forth the poetic element that lies hidden in every existing thing.

Sorrow is not evil, since it stimulates and purifies.

Good council has no price.

The mother's first kiss teaches the child love; the first holy kiss of the woman he loves teaches man hope and faith in life.

Each of us brings with him an element, more or less important, of the life of humanity to come.

What is the most important duty? One's duty toward one's parent.

Labor is the divine law of our existence.