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You take delight not in a city's seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours.


Italo Calvino

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You're full of contradictions, Ms. Wallace."
I looked up at him and arched a brow. "I'm a girl...
TAMMARA WEBBER The only way he could have her was to shatter this stubborn faith of hers. In doing so, would he sha...
FRANCINE RIVERS If I provide for this life and turn away from the Lord, I am wise for a moment, but lost forever.
FRANCINE RIVERS The only way he could have her was to shatter this stubborn faith of hers. In doing so, would he sha...
FRANCINE RIVERS The answer isn't more time but a greater awareness of the time we have.
CRAIG GROESCHEL Imagine life as a game, a game that is filled with obstacles and hazards to overcome but sometimes y...
GARY F EVANS... One's ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE I delight in men over seventy. They always offer one the devotion of a lifetime.
OSCAR WILDE I'd like to answer that question honestly, but we have seven. It's not like it's going to change.
CHERYL BURNETT ... a rhetorical question. It has a question mark at the end, but you are not meant to answer it bec...
MARK HADDON The real question is: How do you react? What do you do next? Evade responsibilities? Bury yourself i...
DAVID GUTERSON In the bible it says you have to forgive seventy times seven. I want you all to know, I'm keeping a ...
HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON To be, or not to be, that is the question.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.
SAMUEL JOHNSON There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million.
WALT STREIGHTIFF When it comes to what you really want in life. Dont take no for an answer. Take no for a question an...
BERNARD KELVIN CLIVE Never give up on you. In order to make a difference you would have to somehow be different.
JOHNNIE DENT JR. 35. God is entitled to a portion of our income—not because He needs it but because we need to give...
JAMES C. DOBSON If the PM wants to answer a different question, that’s fine, and that’s a good answer to a differe...
GARY ACKERMAN Sometimes life ask you a question, but you couldn't find answer in any book. You have to create answ...
SALMAN MANSURI To be or not to be is not a question of compromise. Either you be or you don't be.
GOLDA MEIR Men long for an afterlife in which there apparently is nothing to do but delight in heaven's wonders...
LOUIS D. BRANDEIS The story goes as the line follow... alone... loony....
...

That's what's happening....
DEYTH BANGER It is much more valuable to look for the strength in others. You can gain nothing by criticizing the...
DAISAKU IKEDA the deceased don’t want you to forget about them. They just want you to move past it; not to dwell...
JUSTIN PYFROM We each have a special something we can get only at a special time of our life. like a small flame. ...
HARUKI MURAKAMI Allie, what do the Stars tell me to do? You know I don't understand the scientific part.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN The capacity of humans to believe in what seems to me highly improbable- from table tapping to the s...
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN It is strange being in a crowd where no one knows your face or cares for your purpose. In Lykos, I w...
PIERCE BROWN To be or not to be. That's not really a question.
JEAN-LUC GODARD You deserve to be with somebody, who knows you're the one, from that very first moment he lays eyes ...
C. JOYBELL C. Plunging in “truths” about God is like walking on the bottom of a sea that is not there, searchi...
MARIANA FULGER Never be afraid to ask a person why and don't be afraid of the answer that is given. Take delight in...
CELESTINE L. GRAY All that the spider needs to complete its web is step taking
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH Nature was here a series of wonders, and a fund of delight.
DANIEL BOONE Booze may not be the answer, but it helps you to forget the question
HENRY MON Would I have been better off as a teacher in Ireland or Spain? It's a very difficult question to ans...
GABRIEL BYRNE My computer must be broken: whenever I ask a wrong question, it gives a wrong answer
ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality or whatever you like to call it, c...
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI It's not a silly question if you can't answer it.
JOSTEIN GAARDER In answer to a question you asked me not a long ago, a question I didn’t answer at the time…it i...
KATE AVERY ELLISON Your journey is completely yours. It is unique. Others may try to steal part of it, tell it in their...
KEMI SOGUNLE A process of reason is a process of constant choice in answer to the question: True or False? - Righ...
AYN RAND I’ve always hated the “Who are you?" question. This is a philosophical inquiry. Answering that q...
SANDY NATHAN But there is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question.
THOMAS MERTON How lucky I am to have known somebody and something that saying goodbye to is so damned awful.
EVANS G. VALENS INFINITY is the answer to any question, but it cannot answer any question.
EPHDAN He brings the greatest conflict into the history of mankind. He will come soon to our world just lik...
TOBA BETA She would tuck Sam into her heart, a bright light for her to take out whenever things were darkest.
SARAH J. MAAS No, the sky, it is not a contest or an exam. The only question is, can you look up? Can you take it ...
CLARE VANDERPOOL I don't know if they're really like everybody else, or if they're able to pretend they are.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Even Lot might have been mistaken. But that’s what he promised ‘em – his virgin daughters, you...
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN God is the strength in which I trust." Lesson 47, A Course In Miracles
HELEN SCHUCMAN There isn't an hour of my life without you in it. I mend the boats, test them and all the while the ...
NICHOLAS SPARKS Wake up to a brand new day and realize why you woke up to meet the day! Live to the end of another d...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH If he has a question, I'll answer it. But ... he's trying to take my job. I'm not going to be mean t...
JOEY GOODSPEED Although it's great to appear to a feast, home is always sweet, though it may be lonely and cold lik...
BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA That is a good question for you to ask, not a wise question for me to answer.
ANTHONY EDEN I am often asked how it is that I am able to value people to such a deep degree. Apparently, I exhib...
C. JOYBELL C. I have for a long time loved fabulist, imaginative fiction, such as the writing of Italo Calvino, Jo...
ALAN LIGHTMAN You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part.
HENRY JAMES The sooner they decide, the better. We need to know the answer to this question: Are you in my count...
GORAN SVILANOVIC It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.
DECOUVERTES It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.
EUGENE IONESCO This is what rhyme does. In a couplet, the first rhyme is like a question to which the second rhyme ...
JAMES FENTON If you ask me a question I don't know, I'm not going to answer it
YOGI BERRA America stood in shock. Who could do such a thing? It has fallen to you, members of the jury, to ans...
LARRY MACKEY In pursuit of Nirvana you may not know what your question is but you will know for sure when you hea...
PRATIK SHARDA When you grow up there are things that you would love to do make your father proud is one and have f...
GARY F EVANS... Aren't you [Tahiti Lagoons] one of the seven wonders of the Paradise of painters?
HENRI MATISSE To be or not to be isn't the question. The question is how to prolong being.
TOM ROBBINS That's what's happening... zombies are out... but in hour movie... not in series.
DEYTH BANGER When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of 'No answer.' It ...
C.S. LEWIS ...The answer to nearly every question is written down someplace. It just might take a while to find...
LEMONY SNICKET I watched him even then as he fell, his face undefeated, his eyes still proud
NEIL GAIMAN When you take delight in watching someone you believe hurt you suffer, it is not justice, it is cold...
BRANDON CHRISTOPHER The answer, The answer, my friend, is not yours to invent or create. It will be decided for you. It ...
JOHN PIPER "When we take a road trip it not the number of miles we drive, but the wonders of nature we observe....
TOM BAKER AKA THE PONDERING MAN And I vaguely remember her smiling at me from the door way the glittering ambiguity of a girls smile...
JOHN GREEN In the split-second before someone prepares to answer a question, he will consciously or subconsciou...
PAMELA MEYER It is a lie.
ARTHUR MILLER To ask the 'right' question is far more important than to receive the answer. The solution of a prob...
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI What is the meaning of human life, or of organic life altogether? To answer this question at all imp...
ALBERT EINSTEIN Life gives meaning to life. The answer to the meaning of life is hidden right there inside the quest...
WENDY MASS This instant is the only time there is.
A COURSE IN MIRACLES I am never upset for the reason I think.
A COURSE IN MIRACLES Perception is a mirror not a fact. And what I look on is my state of mind, reflected outward.
A COURSE IN MIRACLES Teach only love for that is what you are.
A COURSE IN MIRACLES Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.
A COURSE IN MIRACLES Only my condemnation injures me.
A COURSE IN MIRACLES I can elect to change all thoughts that hurt.
A COURSE IN MIRACLES Seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world.
A COURSE IN MIRACLES Only your mind can produce fear.
A COURSE IN MIRACLES It doesn't take a lot to learn what gap you should hit by bringing eight guys when only seven are bl...
DAVE MOORE When you do a movie in the studio system, there's a committee. A committee of six or seven peopl...
THOMAS LENNON Consider yourself as always wrong, as having gone aside, and lost your right path, when any delight,...
WILLIAM LAW He always told the truth. If you asked him a question, he was going to give you the answer. You migh...
ENOS CABELL Nothing that is good can become stuck – and if it is stuck, it can’t be any good!
SILVIA HARTMANN Needle in a haystack's easy - just bring a magnet."

Eliot stared witheringly at Hardison....
KEITH R.A. DECANDIDO These philosophically fun ideas usually satisfy nobody. Nonetheless, they remind us that ignorance i...
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON

More Italo Calvino

An exotic birthplace on its own is not informative of anything.
ITALO CALVINO His trees were now hung all over with scrawled pieces of paper and bits of cardboard with maxims fro...
ITALO CALVINO Novels as dull as dishwater, with the grease of random sentiments floating on top.
ITALO CALVINO The human race is a zone of living things that should be defined by tracing its confines.
ITALO CALVINO What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the r...
ITALO CALVINO It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.
ITALO CALVINO Myth is the hidden part of every story, the buried part, the region that is still unexplored because...
ITALO CALVINO I am prisoner of a gaudy and unlivable present, where all forms of human society have reached an ext...
ITALO CALVINO The satirist is prevented by repulsion from gaining a better knowledge of the world he is attracted ...
ITALO CALVINO Biographical data, even those recorded in the public registers, are the most private things one has,...
ITALO CALVINO Everything can change, but not the language that we carry inside us, like a world more exclusive and...
ITALO CALVINO The ideal place for me is the one in which it is most natural to live as a foreigner.
ITALO CALVINO The catalogue of forms is endless: until every shape has found its city, new cities will continue to...
ITALO CALVINO The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretch...
ITALO CALVINO When politicians and politically minded people pay too much attention to literature, it is a bad sig...
ITALO CALVINO A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.
ITALO CALVINO A human being becomes human not through the casual convergence of certain biological conditions, but...
ITALO CALVINO Without translation, I would be limited to the borders of my own country. The translator is my most ...
ITALO CALVINO Nature in America does not arouse powerful emotions in me.
ITALO CALVINO What is modern art but the attempt to pinpoint vague, incorporeal, inexpressible sensations? What is...
ITALO CALVINO Revolutionaries are more formalistic than conservatives.
ITALO CALVINO I write... sonnets... and writing sonnets is boring. You have to find rhymes; you have to write hend...
ITALO CALVINO The city of Leonia refashions itself every day: every morning the people wake between fresh sheets, ...
ITALO CALVINO Melancholy is sadness that has taken on lightness
ITALO CALVINO Myth is the hidden part of every story, the buried part, the region that is still unexplored because...
ITALO CALVINO Traveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places e...
ITALO CALVINO The unconscious is the ocean of the unsayable, of what has been expelled from the land of language, ...
ITALO CALVINO Melancholy is sadness that has taken on lightness.
ITALO CALVINO In love, as in gluttony, pleasure is a matter of the utmost precision.
ITALO CALVINO The unconscious is the ocean of the unsayable, of what has been expelled from the land of language, ...
ITALO CALVINO One writes fables in periods of oppression.
ITALO CALVINO A quarter of America is a dramatic, tense, violent country, exploding with contradictions, full of b...
ITALO CALVINO Of course, I'm of the generation that grew up with Hemingway and Faulkner as strong influences.
ITALO CALVINO Thoughtful lightness can make frivolity seem dull and heavy.
ITALO CALVINO It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear
ITALO CALVINO Viaggi per rivivere il tuo passato? — era a questo punto la domanda del Kan, che poteva anche esse...
ITALO CALVINO Every time I've had to do journalistic investigations, I've cursed, but later I discovered t...
ITALO CALVINO In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Follo...
ITALO CALVINO Sections in the bookstore

- Books You Haven't Read
- Books You Needn't Read
- B...
ITALO CALVINO To fly is the opposite of traveling: you cross a gap in space, you vanish into the void, you accept ...
ITALO CALVINO Rarely does an interviewer ask questions you did not expect. I have given a lot of interviews, and I...
ITALO CALVINO How much energy is wasted in Italy in trying to write the novel that obeys all the rules. The energy...
ITALO CALVINO Reading is going toward something that is about to be, and no one yet knows what it will be.
ITALO CALVINO Mas a desgraça é que foi levado à loucura por Eros, deus pagão, que quanto mais reprimido, mais ...
ITALO CALVINO Writers divide into those who write biting their nails and those who don't. Some writers write l...
ITALO CALVINO The only contact we could have with the void was through this little the void had produced as quinte...
ITALO CALVINO Classics are books which, the more we think we know them through hearsay, the more original, unexpec...
ITALO CALVINO If one wanted to depict the whole thing graphically, every episode, with its climax, would require a...
ITALO CALVINO What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the r...
ITALO CALVINO You are at the wheel of your car, waiting at a traffic light, you take the book out of the bag, rip ...
ITALO CALVINO Ya en el escaparate de la librería localizaste la portada con el título que buscabas. Siguiendo es...
ITALO CALVINO Do you believe that every story must have a beginning and an end? In ancient times a story could end...
ITALO CALVINO Don't you ever get tired of reading?" she asked. "You could hardly be called good company! Don't you...
ITALO CALVINO In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Follo...
ITALO CALVINO The unconscious is the ocean of the unsayable, of what has been expelled from the land of language, ...
ITALO CALVINO A classic is a work which persists as a background noise even when a present that is totally incompa...
ITALO CALVINO I'm a regular guy; I like well-defined outlines. I'm old-fashioned, bourgeois.
ITALO CALVINO The public figure of the writer, the writer-character, the 'personality-cult' of the author,...
ITALO CALVINO The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand
ITALO CALVINO Falsehood is never in words; it is in things.
ITALO CALVINO ...the world was trying to change its old face and show its underbelly of earth and roots.
ITALO CALVINO Amusement has always been the great moving force behind culture.
ITALO CALVINO E combattendo, troveranno che le parole non hanno più significato.
ITALO CALVINO The traveler recognizes the little that is his, discovering the much he has not had and will never h...
ITALO CALVINO It was the hour in which objects lose the consistency of shadow that accompanies them during the nig...
ITALO CALVINO If all material were transparent—the ground that supports us, the envelope that sheathes our body�...
ITALO CALVINO Tu casa, al ser el lugar donde lees, puede decirnos cuál es el lugar que los libros tienen en tu vi...
ITALO CALVINO Although I am small, ugly and dirty, I am highly ambitious, and at the slightest flattery, I immedia...
ITALO CALVINO My mother delayed my enrollment in the Fascist scouts, the Balilla, as long as possible, fi...
ITALO CALVINO A los duelos suceden tarde o temprano acontecimientos alegres, es ley de vida.
ITALO CALVINO No puede haber amor si no se es uno mismo con todas sus fuerzas.
ITALO CALVINO - Quando sarai stanco di star lì cambierai idea! - gli gridò.
- Non cambierò mai idea, - fec...
ITALO CALVINO hasta que murió, sin haber comprendido, tras una vida entera dedicada a la fe, en qué creía, pero...
ITALO CALVINO Yo tenía la impresión de que mi hermano no sólo había enloquecido del todo, sino que se estaba v...
ITALO CALVINO کوزیمو طرحی نوشته و منتشر کرده بود که این نام را داشت: "پ...
ITALO CALVINO Nuestro padre se asomó al antepecho.
- ¡Cuando te canses de estar ahí ya cambiarás de idea!...
ITALO CALVINO A gentleman, my Lord Father, is such whether he is on earth or on the treetops
ITALO CALVINO As a matter of fact, we had already been warned against sliding down the marble banisters, not out o...
ITALO CALVINO Cosimo stretched out his arms. 'I came up here before you, my lords, and here I will stay afterwards...
ITALO CALVINO It was on the fifteenth of June, 1767, that Cosimo Piovasco di Rondò, my brother, sat among us for ...
ITALO CALVINO That mesh of leaves and twigs of fork and froth, minute and endless, with the sky glimpsed only in s...
ITALO CALVINO Cosimo did not yet know love, and what is any experience without that? What point is there in riskin...
ITALO CALVINO Now that he is no longer here I should be interested in so many things: philosophy, politics, histor...
ITALO CALVINO We live in a country where causes are always seen but never effects.
ITALO CALVINO In the Ondariva gardens the branches spread out like the tentacles of extraordinary animals, and the...
ITALO CALVINO Le imprese più ardite vanno vissute con l'animo più semplice. (Cosimo Piovasco Barone di Rondò)
ITALO CALVINO Her breast was young, the nipples rosy. Cosimo just grazed it with his lips, before Viola slid away ...
ITALO CALVINO ...his life was dominating by conflicting ideas, as often happens in periods of transition. The turb...
ITALO CALVINO Il bassotto alzò il muso verso di lui, con lo sguardo dei cani quando non capiscono e non sanno che...
ITALO CALVINO We'll make an army in the trees and bring the earth and the people on it to their senses.
ITALO CALVINO The more time passed, the less happened. The more they felt something must happen, the more the bail...
ITALO CALVINO And she knew him and so herself, for although she had always known herself she had never been able t...
ITALO CALVINO Ombrosa non c’è più. Guardando il cielo sgombro, mi domando se è davvero esistita. Quel frastag...
ITALO CALVINO There is the moment when the silence of the countryside gathers in the ear and breaks into a myriad ...
ITALO CALVINO That wish to enter into an elusive element which had urged Cosimo into the trees, was still working ...
ITALO CALVINO Why d’you make me suffer?"
“Because I love you.”
Now it was his turn to get angry. �...
ITALO CALVINO Si conobbero. Lui conobbe lei e se stesso, perché in verità non s'era mai saputo. E lei conobbe lu...
ITALO CALVINO So began their love, the boy happy and amazed, she happy and not surprised at all (nothing happens b...
ITALO CALVINO Myśli te zaprawione były pewną goryczą ludzi starych, którzy więcej cierpią nad utratą rzecz...
ITALO CALVINO Something must always remain that eludes us ... For power to have an object on which it can be exerc...
ITALO CALVINO again I am torn between the necessity and the impossibility of answering.
ITALO CALVINO A person, for example, reads in adulthood a book that is important for him, and it makes him say, "H...
ITALO CALVINO Amedeo loved thick tomes, and in tackling them he felt the physical pleasure of undertaking a great ...
ITALO CALVINO Resta-nos esclarecer a parte que nesse golfo fantástico cabe ao imaginário indireto, ou seja, o co...
ITALO CALVINO La mia ricerca dell’esattezza si biforca in due direzioni. Da una parte la riduzione degli avvenim...
ITALO CALVINO Penso che siamo sempre alla caccia di qualcosa di nascosto o di solo potenziale o ipotetico, di cui ...
ITALO CALVINO Journeys to relive your past?' was the Khan's question at this point, a question which could also ha...
ITALO CALVINO After a seven days' march through woodland, the traveler directed toward Baucis cannot see the city ...
ITALO CALVINO what he sought was always something lying ahead, and even if it was a matter of the past it was a pa...
ITALO CALVINO God knows wherebthey are now, the people I receive instructions, or rather-let's come right out and ...
ITALO CALVINO ...eyes that, like those of children, look at an eternal present without forgiveness.
ITALO CALVINO Today each of you is the object of the other’s reading, one reads in the other the unwritten story...
ITALO CALVINO In Chloe, a great city, the people who move through the streets are all strangers. At each encounter...
ITALO CALVINO There is still one of which you never speak.'

Marco Polo bowed his head.

'Veni...
ITALO CALVINO With cities, it is as with dreams: everything imaginable can be dreamed, but even the most unexpecte...
ITALO CALVINO Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret,...
ITALO CALVINO I write by hand, making many, many corrections. I would say I cross out more than I write. I have to...
ITALO CALVINO If I were to draw, I would apply myself only to studying the form of inanimate objects," I said some...
ITALO CALVINO ...an archer, the moment he thinks he's experienced, is lost; every lion we encounter in our brief l...
ITALO CALVINO The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here...
ITALO CALVINO The naked man had lost hope now; he would never be able to return to the earth's surface;he would ne...
ITALO CALVINO Who knows whether, if I had given up smoking, I should really have become the strong perfect man I i...
ITALO SVEVO You see things less clearly when you open your eyes too wide.
ITALO SVEVO God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.
ITALO SVEVO There are three things I always forget. Names, faces and... the third I can't remember
ITALO SVEVO The problem is that remittances [from the U.S.] have made Salvadorans comfortable and they don't wan...
ITALO ESCRICH The problem is that remittances [from the United States] have made Salvadorans comfortable, and they...
ITALO ESCRICH