Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes

In today's life, the world belongs only to the stupid, the insensitive and the agitated. The right to live and triumph is now conquered almost by the same means by which you conquer internment in an asylum: the inability to think, amorality and hiperexcitation.

If you take a perfectly well-adjusted normal person of any age from anywhere in the country and stick them in L.A., within about a week I do believe that a lot of their values and morals will start to degrade.

I remember the first time I went to Italy when I was eighteen, I was in Florence and there were all these eighteen, nineteen, twenty-year-olds gliding past on Vespas with crinkly, long, hair, and I thought I was on the set of a movie. I couldn't believe that this was going on and I hadn't known about it before. I was flabbergasted.

Going to Europe as a budding cook opened my eyes to food in a different way. When I got to Italy, the first thing I did was put my little basil plants in the ground and watch them turn into big, healthy bushes.

In London, 'Equus' caused a sensation because it displayed cruelty to horses; in New York, because it allegedly displayed cruelty to psychiatrists.

I owe a great debt to motor-racing, and the first place I went to in Europe when I was 20 was Italy, and I was extremely influenced by it in books until I got there.

My parents came from different backgrounds. My father's was grander than my mother's, so my mother had... to put up with the disapproval of my father's relations.

If you stop for lunch elsewhere in the world, you tend to eat a sandwich, and a bad one. Italy is unique for the style of life. I think everyone envies it a bit.

I cannot believe that human beings live that way.

New Orleans could not be further removed from where I am from. I come from Holland, where everything is perfectly arranged - it's neat; there's no real crime. There's a very strong middle class. Then you get dumped in New Orleans - just the funkiest city, crazy problems, but also street culture unlike anywhere in the States.

I grew up in Hong Kong, and London used to seem very gray: the sky was gray, the buildings were gray, the food was incredibly gray - the food had, like, new kinds of grayness specially invented for it.

Think'st thou there is no tyranny but that Of blood and chains? The despotism of vice-- The weakness and the wickedness of luxury-- The negligence--the apathy--the evils Of sensual sloth--produces ten thousand tyrants, Whose delegated cruelty surpasses The worst acts of one energetic master, However harsh and hard in his own bearing.

I had an amazing experience in Cuba. People there are fantastic. But I do have to say it's very nice to be back home in front of all of you capitalist pigs.

I think one of the main differences between being an English actor and being an American actor is that we have things like the class system in England.I'm middle class. But I've got what some people might consider to be a working-class accent, so you've got those sorts of elements in this country to consider, which, in America, exist, but not necessarily in the same way.

Italy is the home of art and swindling; home of religion and moral rottenness

I've been lucky enough in 20 years in the media to have a nice soap box that put me in a position to describe to an American viewership that Tuscany is different from Umbria, and it's different from Emilia-Romagna and, not that that was news, but it was never presented to them in a way that was, "Hey, look. This is a different plate from that different place." And although we all think of "spaghetti, lasagna, ciao," as what Italy is all about, there's all of this great stuff... I was merely an interpreter. I wasn't the developer of the content.

I've always liked monster movies and I've always been fascinated by - again, growing up in a culture where death was looked upon as a dark subject and living so close to Mexico where you see the Day of the Dead with the skeletons and it's all humor and music and dancing and a celebration of life in a way. That always felt more of a positive approach to things. I think I always responded to that more than this dark, unspoken cloud in the environment I grew up in.

Sometimes I think that Darwin made a mistake and that in fact man is descended from the pig, because eight out of every ten members of the human race are swine, and as crooked as a hog's tail.

What's the use of talking? You can see for yourself that this is a barbarous country; the people have no morals; and the boredom!

I began to think of war, even so-called "good wars" like World War II, as corrupting everybody. Violence begetting violence. The good guys beginning to act like the bad guys. And when I studied the history of wars, it seemed to me that that was the case. Athens vs. Sparta in the Peloponnesian War. The Athenians presumably the democratic state. The Spartans the totalitarian state. But as the war went on, the Athenians began to act like the Spartans. They began committing atrocities and cruelties. So I saw this as a characteristic of war, even so-called "good wars."

Nonsense prevails, modesty fails Grace and virtue turn into stupidity While the calendar fades almost all barricades to a pale compromise And our leaders have feasts on the backsides of beasts They still think they're the gods of antiquity If something you missed didn't even exist It was just an ideal is it such a surprise?

But Americans are different from everyone else in the world - except the Canadians, and Americans are more different from the Canadians than they often think.

I think it impossible, utterly impossible, for any Englishman to live here [in America], and be happy.

Decadence is the total loss of unconsciousness, which is the very basis of life. Could it think, the heart would stop beating.

I don't think Israelis are less critical of corruption than people in Italy, France or America. Israel is special in a different way. There is a daytime Israel and a nighttime Israel. The first is self-confident, pushy and passionate, like other Mediterranean lands. It is hedonistic, materialistic and almost arrogant. During the nighttime, people are terrified, people are filled with existential dreads. These fears aren't baseless.