The Best Quotes about Florence, Italy

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Last Updated on: 9th August 2021, 11:01 pm

Everything about Florence seems to be colored with a mild violet, like diluted wine.  -Henry James

In Paris, you learn wit, in London you learn to crush your social rivals, and in Florence you learn poise.  -Virgil Thomson

Florence  – the city of tranquillity made manifest.  -Katherine Cecil Thurston

And the voices in the waves are always whispering to Florence, in their ceaseless murmuring, of love  – of love, eternal and illimitable, not bounded by the confines of this world, or by the end of time, but ranging still, beyond the sea, beyond the sky, to the invisible country far away!  -Charles Dickens

To be in Florence is to reflect on Europe’s intricate diversity  – and its lost creativity.  -Timothy Garton Ash

This is the fairest picture on our planet, the most enchanting to look upon, the most satisfying to the eye and spirit. To see the sun sink down, drowned in his pink and purple and golden floods, and overwhelm Florence with tides of color that make all the sharp lines dim and faint and turn the solid city to a city of dreams, is a sight to stir the coldest nature, and make a sympathetic one drunk with ecstasy.  -Mark Twain

Florence and art is something that is part of my life and is part of myself.  -Roberto Cavalli

Can she sing? She’s practically a Florence Nightingale.  -Samuel Goldwyn

In Florence, classical buildings sit against medieval buildings. It’s that contrast we like.  -Richard Rogers

As her time in Florence drew to a close she was only at ease amongst those to whom she felt indifferent.  -E. M. Forster

Rome is stately and impressive; Florence is all beauty and enchantment; Genoa is picturesque; Venice is a dream city; but Naples is simply  – fascinating.  -Lilian Whiting

Think of Florence, Paris, London, New York. Nobody visiting them for the first time is a stranger because he’s already visited them in paintings, novels, history books and films. But if a city hasn’t been used by an artist, not even the inhabitants live there imaginatively.  -Alasdair Gray

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The most beautiful thing in Tokyo is McDonald’s. The most beautiful thing in Stockholm is McDonald’s. The most beautiful thing in Florence is McDonald’s. Peking and Moscow don’t have anything beautiful yet.  -Andy Warhol

It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room, with a floor of red tiles which look clean though they are not; with a painted ceiling whereon pink griffins and blue amorini sport in a forest of yellow violins and bassoons. It was pleasant, too, to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings, to lean out into sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches opposite, and, close below, Arno, gurgling against the embankment of the road.  -E. M. Forster

Spending all my remaining money on a ticket to Florence was rendered needlessly complicated by the fact that none of the ticket -sellers had ever heard of the place. At last their supervisor showed up and set them straight by informing them that the city they had always referred to as ‘Firenze’ was in reality called Florence.  -Clive James

Every artist wants his work to be permanent. But what is? The Aswan Dam covered some of the greatest art in the world. Venice is sinking. Great books and pictures were lost in the Florence floods. In the meantime we still enjoy butterflies.  -Romare Bearden

Aeschylus and Plato are remembered today long after the triumphs of Imperial Athens are gone. Dante outlived the ambitions of thirteenth century Florence. Goethe stands serenely above the politics of Germany, and I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over cities, we too will be remembered not for victories or defeats in battle or in politics, but for our contribution to the human spirit.  -John F. Kennedy

You look around the world at geniuses, and they don’t appear randomly, they appear in genius clusters. Athens in 50 BC, Florence 1500, Silicon Valley today. This is not a coincidence.  -Eric Weiner

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Although I studied Dante’s Inferno as a student, it wasn’t until recently, while researching in Florence, that I came to appreciate the enduring influence of Dante’s work on the modern world.  -Dan Brown

When rivers flooded, when fire fell from the sky, what a fine place the library was, the many rooms, the books. With luck, no one found you. How could they!  -when you were off to Tanganyika in ’98, Cairo in 1812, Florence in 1492!?  -Ray Bradbury

I feel like my name completely does not belong on that list [of great athlets], but I’m completely grateful for everything that they [Jackie Joyner -Kersee, Florence Griffith -Joyner and even Wilma Rudolph] have done.  -Allyson Felix

The key to the city of Florence was about two feet long, and painted a garish gold. Hamilton was fascinated by it. “Wow! How big is the lock?” Jonah laughed. “There is no lock, cuz. It’s an honorary gig. Back in my crib in LA, I’ve got a whole shed full of keys from different cities. Want to know the kicker? I can’t get at them. The gardener lost the key to the shed.  -Gordon Korman

I doubt if Dickens did, especially his women -his pretty women -Mrs. Dombey, Florence, Dora, Agnes, Ruth Pinch, Kate Nickleby, little Emily -we know them all through Hablot Browne alone -and none of them present any very marked physical characteristics. They are sweet and graceful, neither tall nor short; they have a pretty droop in their shoulders, and are very ladylike; sometimes they wear ringlets, sometimes not, and each would do very easily for the other.  -George du Maurier

In these days before antiseptics, doctors themselves also suffered high mortality rates. Florence Nightingale, a nurse during the Crimean War (1853 -1856), watched one particularly inept surgeon cut both himself and, somehow, a bystander while blundering about during an amputation. Both men contracted an infection and died, as did the patient. Nightingale commented that it was the only surgery she’d ever seen with 300 percent mortality.  -Sam Kean

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I wear myself out trying to render the orange trees so that they’re not stiff but like those I saw by Botticelli in Florence. It’s a dream that won’t come true.  -Berthe Morisot

For all her active goodness, Florence Nightingale herself was far from being the angelic figure of popular adulation: according to Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians she was a self -righteous, domineering amazon, who was ruthless in her compassion, merciless in her philantropy, destructive in friendships, obsessional in her list for power, and demonic in her saintliness.  -David Cannadine

I do quite like sightseeing. I like churches, museums, galleries and all that stuff. I love the smell of a church in Italy or the smell of an old greasy spoon somewhere. I like markets and little funny shops in the backstreets of Florence.  -Ashley Jensen

I was like, I can’t believe I get to be in a scene with Meryl Streep [in Florence Foster Jenkins]! And then I was like, but why do I have to play Chopin? It’s already going to be intimidating.  -Simon Helberg

I know that they [Jackie Joyner -Kersee, Florence Griffith -Joyner and even Wilma Rudolph] have paved the way and they have been a source of inspiration.  -Allyson Felix

Florence Farr once said to me, If we could say to ourselves, with sincerity, ‘this passing moment is as good as any I shall ever know,’ we could die upon the instant and be united with God.  -William Butler Yeats

I did not want to be the accompanist to an operatic star. But I was at a very high level for a 16 -year -old, and I maintained that. So really good, but more impressive than classically trained. So I had to take a crash course in classical technique because I really wanted to get away with playing this character [in Florence Foster Jenkins] without people saying, “That’s not really accurate.”  -Simon Helberg

We would go on retreats to Florence. The people in the planning team got to be good friends and so we did things like, we’d all go over to the Fort Belvedere in Florence and take that thing over. Because it’s up for grabs, you can rent it. And then have New Age meetings and all that kind of stuff. [Buckminster] Fuller loved to go there.  -Paul Laffoley

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Florence Nightingale was an amazing figure. She created the American Red Cross. She saw the suffering from bad health conditions on the battlefield and in the military hospitals, and she fought like crazy to change the conditions; to make sure that the doctors washed their hands and practiced sanitary measures. She put herself at great risks.  -Sharon Lawrence

remember a feeling of excitement, of sudden inspiration, when I was visiting Giovanni Boccaccio’s home in the walled village of Certaldo, outside of Florence. (Boccaccio was the medieval author of The Decameron.) It was as though I had met my muse! After this trip, I read The Decameron and began writing the Alchemy Series in earnest.  -Mary Pope Osborne

My grandfather is from Ireland. His name is Florence McCarthy. He moved to New York in 1920. They used to beat him up because his name was Florence. He had to switch his name to Frank. And then this Christmas, he made an announcement  – he goes, ‘I’m switching me name back to Florence.’ And we beat him up, ’cause it’s a dumb name and he’s old and weak and it was easy.  -Greg Fitzsimmons

If he (Peter O’Toole) had been any prettier it would have been Florence of Arabia.  -Noel Coward

I trained with a guy named Tito Gobbi, who was the Marlon Brando of the opera world. Tito Gobbi was the greatest singing baritone in the opera world and I studied in Florence, Firenze, with him. That was my first love, as it was Frank Sinatra’s, oddly enough.  -Robert Davi

What I love about the gay thing is that every single person I type into Google, it doesn’t matter if it’s Florence Welch, anybody, if you are not being called gay you don’t have a career. That’s my theory!  -Daniel Radcliffe

The interactions of business and culture, one upon the other, form one of the least explored phases of history. For such a study, no city would appear better fixed than Florence, so richly dowered with both economic and spiritual vitality.  -Mary Ritter Beard

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I had to learn all the pieces backward and forward [to play it in “Florence Foster Jenkins”]. We practiced on weekends. It was very much like being in school, except it was with Meryl Streep. Like, I would go to her apartment and we would practice Mozart’s “Queen of the Night.”  -Simon Helberg

I had a crush Florence Henderson when I was younger, i would love to meet Marcia but I would prefer mom.  -Danny Trejo

When we decided to marry, we had two ceremonies  – one was more bureaucratic for the sake of the Swiss authorities,then a church service in Florence, and I wrote the music for the church service. The challenge in that was that Iman’s [Abdulmajid] family are Muslim and mine are Protestant. I had to be careful about the prayers that we chose and the music I wrote because I didn’t want to offend either side.  -David Bowie

Bismarck was a large persian cat owned by Florence Nightingale.  -Florence Nightingale

I remember one English teacher in the eighth grade, Florence Schrack, whose husband also taught at the high school. I thought what she said made sense, and she parsed sentences on the blackboard and gave me, I’d like to think, some sense of English grammar and that there is a grammar, that those commas serve a purpose and that a sentence has a logic, that you can break it down. I’ve tried not to forget those lessons, and to treat the English language with respect as a kind of intricate tool.  -John Updike

The nations which have put mankind and posterity most in their debt have been small states Israel, Athens, Florence, Elizabethan England.  -Bill Vaughan

When I was 12 years old, I read Nancy Drew mysteries and biographies of Madame Curie and Florence Nightingale and books about girls who love horses or go to nursing school. I belonged to the Girl Scouts and got A’s in school and rarely disobeyed my parents. I still kept a collection of Barbie dolls in my room, and I almost never spoke to boys.  -Joyce Maynard

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To her [Florence Nightingale] chiefly I owed the awakening to the fact that sanitation is the supreme goal of medicine its foundation and its crown.  -Elizabeth Blackwell

After a sleepless night the body gets weaker, It becomes dear and not yours  – and nobody’s. Just like a seraph you smile to people And arrows moan in the slow arteries. After a sleepless night the arms get weaker And deeply equal to you are the friend and foe. Smells like Florence in the frost, and in each Sudden sound is the whole rainbow. Tenderly light the lips, and the shadow’s golden Near the sunken eyes. Here the night has sparked This brilliant likeness  – and from the dark night Only just one thing  – the eyes  – are growing dark.  -Marina Tsvetaeva

People think me a sort of Florence Nightingale, but I have no heroic qualities. I simply don’t feel very much.  -Franny Billingsley

Hamilton dabbed a tissue at the cut under his eye. “Except for the time I met the Great Khali, that was the coolest thing I’ve ever done!” The foursome, only slightly the worse for wear, stood on the tarmac of the small airfield outside Milan, transferring their luggage from the limo to Jonah’s jet for the flight back to Florence. “You didn’t do anything, yo,” Jonah seethed. “It was done to all of us by the freak show with the nerve to complain that the family branches are too violent!  -Gordon Korman

Everything I pick up seems to lure me away. Everything I do in my daily life begins to feel like striking wet matches. The need to travel is a mysterious force. A desire to ‘go’ runs through me equally with an intense desire to ‘stay’ at home. An equal and opposite thermodynamic principle. When I travel, I think of home and what it means. At home I’m dreaming of catching trains at night in the gray light of Old Europe, or pushing open shutters to see Florence awaken. The balance just slightly tips in the direction of the airport.  -Frances Mayes

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Speak up,’ says Myrna who has a fuzzy white caterpillar of a moustache. ‘My hearing’s not so good.’ ‘I WAS SHOT IN THE HEAD.’ Liz turns to Thandi. ‘I thought you said you didn’t remember how you got the hole in your head.’ Thandi apologizes. ‘I just remembered.’ ‘Shot in the head!’ Florence -scratchy -voice says. ‘Oy, that’s rough.’ ‘Aw, it’s nothing special. Happens pretty regularly where I’m from,’ Thandi says. ‘WHAT?’ asks Myrna with the moustache. ‘Say it toward my left ear, that’s the good one.’ ‘I SAID, “IT’S NOTHING SPECIAL,”‘ Thandi yells/  -Gabrielle Zevin

I made music with my friend, who we called Isabella Machine to which I was Florence Robot. When I was about an hour away from my first gig, I still didn’t have a name, so I thought ‘Okay, I’ll be Florence Robot/Isa Machine’, before realising that name was so long it’d drive me mad.  -Florence Welch

If you go to Florence, it has all surface beauty, but like Venice, it’s simply a museum of Renaissance times. Los Angeles is raw, uncouth and bizarre, but it’s a place of substance. It has more new horizons than any other place.  -Werner Herzog

I thought I’d never get to see that. Florence Griffith Joyner  – every time she ran, I ran.  -Wilma Rudolph

In France it was Joan of Arc; in the Crimea it was Florence Nightingale; in the deep south there was Rosa Parks; in India there was Mother Teresa and in Florida there was Katherine Harris.  -Larry Gatlin

Paul Newman’s half Jewishand Florence Henderson’s half, tooPut them together,What a fine looking Jew!  -Adam Sandler

I often compare Margaret Thatcher with Florence Nightingale. She stalks through the wards of our hospitals as a lady with a lamp. Unfortunately, it’s a blowlamp.  -Denis Healey

A really interesting and happy time was when I first went to Florence as a student and studied Italian. I was living in a pensione on an allowance of £40 a month, which was princely. I did a lot of work and enjoyed myself immensely.  -James Fenton

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The student has his Rome, his Florence, his whole glowing Italy, within the four walls of his library. He has in his books the ruins of an antique world and the glories of a modern one.  -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Florence and Milan had given him ideas more flexible than those of people who’d stayed at home.  -Hilary Mantel

New England is a finished place. Its destiny is that of Florence or Venice, not Milan while the American empire careens onward toward its unpredicted end. . . . It is the first American section to be finished to achieve stability in the conditions of its life. It is the first old civilization, the first permanent civilization in America. -Bernard DeVoto

Where the Tennessee River, like a silver snake, winds her way through the clay hills of Alabama, sits high on these hills, my home town, Florence.  -William Christopher Handy

I studied at a university in Florence and finished my degree. My mother was very strict about this recipe: You need to get your degree.  -Donatella Versace

You have the most revolting Florence Nightingale complex,’ said Mrs. Smiling. It is not that at all, and well you know it. On the whole, I dislike my fellow beings; I find them so difficult to understand. But I have a tidy mind and untidy lives irritate me. Also, they are uncivilized.  -Stella Gibbons

Jaipur, like Florence or Kyoto, other artisan -rich cities to which it roughly compares, has always been known for its craftsmanship.  -Hanya Yanagihara

Cities are about juxtaposition. In Florence, classical buildings sit against medieval buildings. It’s that contrast we like. In Bordeaux, we built law courts right next door to what is effectively a listed historic building, and that makes it exciting.  – Richard Rogers

I got married in Florence, Italy. My husband and I were in love but totally broke, so we eloped and got married in Italy, where he was going on a business trip. We had to pull a guy off the street to be our witness. It was incredibly romantic. Florence is still one of my favorite cities in the world.  -Libba Bray

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It’s so worth -while being a judge, because, if I make good, I can help prove that a woman’s place is as much on the bench, in City Council, or in Congress, as in the home.  -Florence Ellinwood Allen

Florence  – the city of tranquillity made manifest …  -Katherine Cecil Thurston

Rome is stately and impressive; Florence is all beauty and enchantment; Genoa is picturesque; Venice is a dream city; but Naples is simply  – fascinating.  -Lilian Whiting

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