Quotes about European countries

[julia90]

from Wikiquote


ITALY and ITALIANS

"Italy will take care of itself."
Italian proverb; a common expression when Italy was in the process of reunification.


All Italians are plunderers.
Napoleon Bonaparte, when in Italy
Not all but a good part (good part is buona parte, intending Buonaparte).
Supposed response by a lady who overheard him.


Venice once was dear,
The pleasant place of all festivity,
The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy.
Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto iv, Stanza 3.


Beyond the Alps lies Italy.
James William Foley, Graduation Time Expression found in Livy Ab Urbe Bk 21 30.


Throughout all Italy beside,
What does one find, but Want and Pride?
Farces of Superstitious folly,
Decay, Distress and Melancholy:
The Havock of Despotick Power,
A Country rich, its owners poor;
Unpeopled towns, and Lands untilled,
Bodys uncloathed, and mouths unfilled.
The nobles miserably great,
In painted Domes and empty state,
Too proud to work, too poor to eat,
No arts the meaner sort employ,
They nought approve, nor ought enjoy.
Each blown from misery grows a Saint,
He prays from Idleness and fast from Want.
John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey (1729), quoted in Jeremy Black, The British and the Grand Tour, (1985)


Italy is only a geographical expression
Klemens Wenzel, Prince von Metternich


On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome
Edgar Allen Poe, Helen


"Because one has little fear of shocking vanity in Italy, people adopt an intimate tone very quickly and discuss personal things".
Stendhal, La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma)

[spongetaro]

"French people are Italian people in a bad mood." J.Cocteau

[julia90]

EUROPE

I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe. Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours... They are nations of eternal war.
(Thomas Jefferson)

Whoever lights the torch of war in Europe can wish for nothing but chaos.
(Adolf Hitler)

You know what the funniest thing about Europe is? It’s the little differences.
(Quentin Tarantino)

A war between Europeans is a civil war.
(Victor Hugo)

That grand drama in a hundred acts, which is reserved for the next two centuries of Europe—the most terrible, most questionable and perhaps also the most hopeful of all dramas.
(Friedrich Nietzsche)

I doubt that the evil spirits of the past, under which we in Europe have already suffered more than enough this century, have been banished for ever.
(Helmut Kohl)

One day, on the model of the United States of America, a United States of Europe will come into being.
(George Washington)

That in order to achieve the triumph of liberty, justice and peace in the international relations of Europe, and to render civil war impossible among the various peoples which make up the European family, only a single course lies open: to constitute the United States of Europe
(Mikhail Bakunin)

Europe is a state with several provinces
(Montesquieu)

The Federated Republic of Europe—the United States of Europe—that is what must be. National autonomy no longer suffices. Economic evolution demands the abolition of national frontiers. If Europe is to remain split into national groups, then Imperialism will recommence its work. Only a Federated Republic of Europe can give peace to the world.
(Leon Trotsky)

If Ireland is to become a new Ireland she must first become European
(James Joyce)

Whatever else may divide us, Europe is our common home; a common fate has linked us through the centuries, and it continues to link us today.
(Leonid Brezhnev)

We are asking the nations of Europe between whom rivers of blood have flowed to forget the feuds of a thousand years
(Winston Churchill, 14/02/1948)

Why should there not be a European group which could give a sense of enlarged patriotism and common citizenship to the distracted peoples of this turbulent and mighty continent? And why should it not take its rightful place with other great groupings and help to shape the onward destinies of men?
(Winston Churchill, 19/09/1946)

If Europe were once united in the sharing of its common inheritance there would be no limit to the happiness, the prosperity, and the glory which its 300,000,000 or 400,000,000 people would enjoy.
(Winston Churchill)

My revenge is fraternity! No more frontiers! The Rhine for everyone! Let us be the same Republic, let us be the United States of Europe, let us be the continental federation, let us be European liberty, let us be universal peace!
(Victor Hugo)

A day will come when all nations on our continent will form a European brotherhood... A day will come when we shall see... the United States of America and the United States of Europe face to face, reaching out for each other across the seas.
(Victor Hugo)

Europe thus divided into nationalities freely formed and free internally, peace between States would have become easier: the United States of Europe would become a possibility.
(Napoleon)

The ocean is rough and whirling, and the currents go to two possible endings: the autocrat, or the United States of Europe'.
(Carlo Cattaneo)

A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of communism.
(Karl Marx)

So there is no single European people. There is no single all-embracing community of culture and tradition among, say, Warsaw, Amsterdam, Berlin and Belgrade. In fact, there are at least four communities: the Northern Protestant, the Latin Catholic, the Greek Orthodox, and the Muslim Ottoman. There is no single language - there are more than twenty. (...) There are no real European political parties (...). And most significantly of all: unlike the United States, Europe still does not have a common story.
(Geert Mak, 2005)

Europe is not really even a geographic entity; it is separated from Asia only at one point, the Bosphorus, by a small stretch of water. North of that there is continuity over the russians steppes, a complete terrestrial flow. I suggest that is also true of culture, and indeed of social organization. Indeed Europe has never been purely isolated, purely Christian. Instead of Christian Europe, one has to see the continent as penetrated by the three world religions that originated in the Near East and which indeed had a common mythology or sacred text; in order of arrival these were Judaism, Christianity and Islam. (...) All have equal entitlements to be present, and in this general ('objective') sense none can be considered only as the Other; they are part of Europe, part of our heritage.
(Jack Goody, 2004)

As to the territorial limits of Europe, they may seem relatively clear on its seaward flanks, but many island groups far to the north and west—Svalbard, the Faroes, Iceland, and the Madeira and Canary islands—are considered European, while Greenland (though tied politically to Denmark) is conventionally allocated to North America. Furthermore, the Mediterranean coastlands of North Africa and southwestern Asia also exhibit some European physical and cultural affinities. Turkey and Cyprus in particular, while geologically Asian, possess elements of European culture and may be regarded as parts of Europe.
(Encyclopaedia Britannica)

The peoples of Europe are a work in progress and always must be... The history of the people of Europe has not ended -- it never will. Ethnogenesis is a process of the present and future as much as it is the past. No efforts of romantics, politicians, or social scientists can preserve once and for all some essential soul of a people or nation. Nor can any effort ensure that nations, ethnic groups, and communities of today will not vanish utterly in the future. The past may have set the parameters within which one can build the future, but it cannot determine what that future must be.
(Patrick J. Geary, 2003)

Many of the traits on which modern Europe prides itself came to it from Muslim Spain. Diplomacy, free trade, open borders, the techniques of academic research, of anthropology, etiquette, fashion, various types of medicine, hospitals, all came from this great city of cities. (...) The surprise is the extent to which Islam has been a part of Europe for so long, first in Spain, then in the Balkans, and the extent to which it has contributed so much towards the civilisation which we all too often think of, wrongly, as entirely Western. Islam is part of our past and our present, in all fields of human endeavour. It has helped to create modern Europe. It is part of our own inheritance, not a thing apart
(Charles, Prince of Wales, 1993)

Yes, it is Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals, it is Europe, it is the whole of Europe, that will decide the fate of the world.
(Charles de Gaulle, 1959, Strasbourg)

Whoever speaks of Europe is wrong: it is a geographical expression.
(Otto Von Bismarck)

Europe is so well gardened that it resembles a work of art, a scientific theory, a neat metaphysical system. Man has re-created Europe in his own image.
(Aldous Huxley)

As an artist, a man has no home in Europe save in Paris.
(Friedrich Nietzsche)

Purity of race does not exist. Europe is a continent of energetic mongrels
(Herbert Albert Laurens Fisher)

Hey, this is Europe. We took it from nobody; we won it from the bare soil that the ice left. The bones of our ancestors, and the stones of their works, are everywhere. Our liberties were won in wars and revolutions so terrible that we do not fear our governors: they fear us. Our children giggle and eat ice-cream in the palaces of past rulers. We snap our fingers at kings. We laugh at popes. When we have built up tyrants, we have brought them down. And we have nuclear ********* weapons.
(Ken Macleod)

Africa north of the Sahara, from a zoological point of view, is now, and has been since early Tertiary times, a part of Europe. This is true both of animals and of the races of man.
(Madison Grant)

In America the cohesion was a matter of choice and will. But in Europe it was organic.
(D. H. Lawrence)

Until now when we have started to talk about the uniqueness of America we have almost always ended by comparing ourselves to Europe. Toward her we have felt all the attraction and repulsions of Oedipus
(Daniel J Boorstin)

"The EU Constitution is something new in human history. Though it is not as eloquent as the French and U.S. constitutions, it is the first governing document of its kind to expand the human franchise to the level of global consciousness. The language throughout the draft constitution speaks of universalism, making it clear that its focus is not a people, or a territory, or a nation, but rather the human race and the planet we inhabit."
(Jeremy Rifkin, 2004)

“[The Constitution] will seal the victory of the nation-states over the European 'super-state'".
(Le Figaro, France, 2004)

"The EU Constitution safeguards national sovereignty of Member States."
(Guilherme Oliveira Martins, 2004)

"This is a Constitution … which consecrates the EU as a union of sovereign states, which continues not to opt for federal institutions."
(El Mundo, Spain, 2004)

"This Constitution does not reflect the thoughts, hopes and aspirations of ordinary people. It does nothing for jobs or economic growth and widens further still the democratic deficit. The gap between the governors and the governed is now a gaping chasm."
(Nigel Farage, 2003)

"A consensus [that] has been established … around the British concept of a market system stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals, accompanied by intergovernmental co-operation in areas where collective action is more efficient, and a security policy integrated with that of the USA."
(Nicolas Baverez, 2003)

"There is no place for concern that it would change the structure and operation of the EU in a radical way. 90% of the constitution agreement is already in the current agreements. The innovations in the draft will clarify the structure of the EU and make its activity more efficient, as well as strengthen citizens’ rights."
(Egils Levits, 2004)

"Europe is and will be a Union of States."
(Jose Luis Zapatero, 2004)

[Canek]

"Greece, Portugal and other PIIGS countries will most likely have to cut their social guarantees. Trade unions in Europe are very strong, and they will say their word. As for the European Union on the whole, the current situation is good for its economy. The euro has been losing its value against the dollar, which shows a positive influence on the competitive ability of European goods,” - Ivan Rodionov, a professor of the Supreme School of Economics.

[Carlitos]

Canek
The euro has been losing its value against the dollar, which shows a positive influence on the competitive ability of European goods,”

Which products are concerned, maybe the Spanish cucumbers?

[Canek]

Every spanish product is not to be trusted.

[Cimmerianbloke]

"Greece, Portugal and other PIIGS countries will most likely have to cut their social guarantees. Trade unions in Europe are very strong, and they will say their word. As for the European Union on the whole, the current situation is good for its economy. The euro has been losing its value against the dollar, which shows a positive influence on the competitive ability of European goods,” - Ivan Rodionov, a professor of the Supreme School of Economics.

Funny that this gentleman did not bother having a look at the unemployment figures across Europe, his conclusion would have been quite different, I bet.

[Carlitos]

Every spanish product is not to be trusted.

It is not necessary to spend his life hating the white man, after the crisis of the cucumber is clear that consumption is the safest Spanish can be done, so you can get back in the mouth a cucumber extraordinary Spanish.

[Canek]

i do not hate "the white man"... and if you are implying that i hate spaniards, spaniards are not white to start with.

your post don't have a sense.

[Carlitos]

i do not hate "the white man"... and if you are implying that i hate spaniards, spaniards are not white to start with.

your post don't have a sense.

You hate the white man and that is racism.

[Canek]

I only hate racist peopl and is not my fault is the racist use to be white men. But no i don't hate white men or other racial group.

[Reinaert]

I have never seen a white man in Europe.
By Reinaert.

You can add this quote to the list as was intended in this thread. LOL