Venice Quotes

• Venice never quite seems real, but rather an ornate film set suspended on the water.

  Frida Giannini

  Real, Water, Never Quit

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• Venice once was dear,
  The pleasant place of all festivity,
  The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy.

  Lord Byron

  Earth, Masque, Dear

  Lord Byron (2015). “Childe Harold's Pilgrimage”, p.84, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• It is the city of mirrors, the city of mirages, at once solid and liquid, at once air and stone.

  Erica Jong

  Mirrors, Air, Cities

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• When I seek another word for 'music', I never find any other word than 'Venice'

  Friedrich Nietzsche

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• Venice astonishes more than it pleases at first sight.

  Madame de Stael

  Sight, Firsts, Please

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• If you read a lot, nothing is as great as you've imagined. Venice is - Venice is better.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Ifs

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• I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; A palace and a prison on each hand; I saw from out the wave of her structure's rise As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand: A thousand years their cloudy wings expand Around me, and a dying Glory smiles O'er the far times, when many a subject land Look'd to the winged Lion's marble pines, Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles.

  Lord Byron

  Land, Bridges, Wings

  Lord Byron (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Lord Byron (Illustrated)”, p.264, Delphi Classics

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• Perhaps it is because Venice is both liquid and solid, both air and stone, that it somehow combines all the elements crucial to make our imaginations ignite and turn fantasies into realities.

  Erica Jong

  Reality, Air, Imagination

  Erica Jong (2013). “Shylock's Daughter: A Novel of Love in Venice”, p.14, Open Road Media

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• You take my house when you do take the prop
  That doth sustain my house; you take my life
  When you do take the means whereby I live.

  William Shakespeare

  Life, Mean, Punishment

  'The Merchant of Venice' (1596-8) act 4, sc. 1, l. [375]

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• There is something so different in Venice from any other place in the world, that you leave at once all accustomed habits and everyday sights to enter an enchanted garden.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Garden, Sight, Everyday

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• I had my dreams of Venice, but nothing that I had dreamed was as impossible as what I found.

  Arthur Symons

  Dream, Impossible, Found

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• The quality of mercy is not strain'd, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown; His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above this sceptred sway; It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then show likest God's When mercy seasons justice.

  William Shakespeare

  Kings, Rain, Heart

  'The Merchant of Venice' (1596-8) act 4, sc. 1, l. [182]

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• My beautiful, my own
  My only Venice-this is breath! Thy breeze
  Thine Adrian sea-breeze, how it fans my face!
  Thy very winds feel native to my veins,
  And cool them into calmness!

  Lord Byron

  Beautiful, Sea Breeze, Wind

  Lord Byron (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Lord Byron (Illustrated)”, p.1411, Delphi Classics

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• A realist, in Venice, would become a romantic by mere faithfulness to what he saw before him.

  Arthur Symons

  Saws, Realist, Faithfulness

  Arthur Symons (1907). “Cities of Italy”

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• Each artist or writer who works in Venice comes to believe that the city yields its most special secret to him or her alone.

  Erica Jong

  Believe, Artist, Yield

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• I will never forget experiencing Venice for the first time. It feels like you are transported to another time - the art, music, food and pure romance in the air is like no other place.

  Elizabeth Berkley

  Art, Air, Romance

  "Traveling with the Stars: Elizabeth Berkley". Interview with Kelly Carter, usatoday30.usatoday.com. February 2, 2009.

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• I have an Italian comedy at the Venice Film Festival.

  Robert Englund

  Italian, Festivals, Comedy

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• Venice, the most touristy place in the world, is still just completely magic to me.

  Frances Mayes

  Magic, World, Stills

  "'Tuscan Sun' author on Italy's pleasures". Interview with A. Pawlowski, www.cnn.com. March 10, 2010.

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• Prague is like a vertical Venice steps everywhere.

  Penelope Gilliatt

  Prague, Steps, Vertical

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• Until it seems the whole city will be covered with gold pollen shaken from the bell-towers, lilies plundered with the weight of massive bees . . .

  Hilda Doolittle

  Cities, Gold, Towers

  Hilda Doolittle, Louis L. Martz (1986). “Collected Poems 1912-1944”, p.556, New Directions Publishing

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• Venice is the worlds unconscious: a misers glittering hoard, guarded by a Beast whose eyes are made of white agate, and by a saint who is really a prince who has just slain a dragon.

  Mary McCarthy

  Eye, Dragons, White

  Mary McCarthy (1956). “Venice observed”

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• A group of us started a community center in Santa Monica. We've tried different programs, and three have worked really well. A poetry group. Once a week we visit Venice High and talk to girls at risk.

  Lisa Bonet

  Girl, Community, Risk

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Amsterdam was a great surprise to me. I had always thought of Venice as the city of canals; it had never entered my mind that I should find similar conditions in a Dutch town.

  James Weldon Johnson

  Cities, Mind, Dutch

  James Weldon Johnson, Sondra K. Wilson (1995). “The Selected Writings of James Weldon Johnson: Social, political, and literary essays”, p.331, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• Oh, London is a man's town, there's power in the air; And Paris is a woman's town, with flowers in her hair; And it's sweet to dream in Venice, and it's great to study Rome; But when it comes to living, there is no place like home.

  Henry Van Dyke

  Dream, Sweet, Flower

  Henry Van Dyke (1920). “The Poems of Henry Van Dyke”

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• I've been kind of submerged in my own little geographic location for a really long time in Venice Beach

  Amber Tamblyn

  Beach, Long, Littles

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