If you are what you ought to be, you will set fire to all Italy, and not only yonder. (Letter 368 to Stefano Maconi)

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "If you are what you ought to be, you will set fire to all Italy, and not only yonder. (Letter 368 to Stefano Maconi)" in the context of "Original Italian: Se sarete quello che dovete essere, metterete fuoco in tutta Italia, non tanto costì. (Lettera 368 a Stefano Maconi)
 • Variant versions:
  • If you are what you should be, you will set the whole world on fire!
  • If you are what you should be, you will set the whole world ablaze! As quoted by Pope John Paul II in | an address to the Regnum Christi Movement and the Legionaries of Christ (4 January 2001)
   • Also as quoted by Pope John Paul II in | The Closing Homily at World Youth Day, Tor Vergata, (Sunday 20 August 2000)
  • Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.
   • As quoted by Bishop Richard Chartres in his sermon to the Royal Wedding congregation at Westminster Abbey (29 April 2011)
• Variant versions:
 • I see the world is rotten because of silence … speak the truth in a million voices. It is silence that kills. (quoted at 0:23 of Randall Terry (2020-10-19), The Silence That Kills, at: 23:29, retrieved: 2022-06-07)
• Original Italian: Oimé, non più tacere! Gridate con centomiglia di lingue. Veggo che, per lo tacere, el mondo è guasto, la Sposa di Cristo è impalidita ( Lettera 16, "A uno grande prelato")
 • lit.: "O alas, be silent no more! Shout with a hundred thousand tongues. I see that, through silence, the world is broken, the Bride of Christ is impaled"" to mean that wisdom is timeless.