Source on Federico De Roberto

“The utopians want all men to be equally rich or well-off, this equality in wealth or comfort, is the promise with which they entice the workers; For if the workers knew that the result of the agitation would be, as we have seen, universal poverty and mediocrity, they would not listen to them. The serious Socialism disavows those novelists of vivid imagination who have represented in their own way the life to come, but if the thinkers do not tell us what it will be, what is the reality they want to realize, we must also, in order to have an idea of it, accept the image that the novelists give of it. Under the socialist system, each citizen will work not on his own account, but on behalf of the whole consortium, and will receive in return for his work a cheque so large that it will not be possible to spend it all. If this is the only difficulty in the future state, we can say that everything will go smoothly: the amount to be spent, the way in which it is spent, will be an insoluble problem.”

“The Country? With a big P? Do you still believe it? My dear, if you say, who it is, where it is, what it does, where it can be found, I will be grateful. The country is you and I, and the usher who stands in the anteroom, and the young lady who copies letters from there. The country is everyone, which means no one. And our ideas are just as good as those of our adversaries.”

“Thought is like the Protheus of the fable, which changes its aspect incessantly, or rather, since there is not a single and fixed thought, but an infinite series of thoughts, inconstant, contradictory, no one can with one word define a man exactly; No man can define himself exactly.”

“Progress is the synthesis of all human history; Those who have leafed through its immortal books have read this word on every page. Monsieur de Voltaire, to a hairdresser who gave him advice on the art of poetry, replied: "Master Andrew, make wigs..." I ask myself if the great French writer would not have been more prudent by advising Master Andrea to study prosody! The killing of a man is justly condemned as the most heinous crime, because by the death given to a fellow-man, the murderer obtains an advantage for his own life.”

“The nobility and wealth that one acquires by one's own work no one hates them, because everyone hopes for them...”

“"The Monarchy made Italy." "Is she alone, alone? And how did he do it? Sponte or pushes? With victories, or by dint of defeats? And what is this Italy of his? Where is the glory, the laurel and the iron that your Leopardi was looking for sixty years ago? Do you know about it? We are the last of the great nations, an inflated frog on the verge of cracking, like the one in the fairy tale. Theoretically, philosophically, you will not tell me that the reign of one man over all his fellows is the ideal. The ideal, if you are an idealist, is quite the opposite, it is the social republic, equality and the agreement of all. Utopia is fine, and even those who support it know it; but a generous utopia, not unpleasant resignation, like ours. Generous and dangerous, you mean? Go there, for the world has not fallen and will not fall, no matter how many reforms and revolutions are made..."”

“Wealth, absolute or relative, cannot belong to everyone; it is impossible for those who take part in the game of life to win all, and for the winnings to be equal; The gamblers know this, but before the cards are dealt, before the die is cast, they are all equally animated and comforted by hope, and the loser, if he feels a human sense of spite, nevertheless accepts the necessity of fate, and awaits revenge. The form of society endures for the very simple reason that most men, if they conceive the ideal, obey the dictates of reason. The ideal is so called because it is not actualized and not feasible; The day it were to be implemented would no longer be the ideal, but the real. This is not metaphysics: it is practical philosophy, because it teaches us to beware of the flights of Icarus. The wisdom expressed by mankind in age-old experience repeats to young people that youth, health, and pleasures are all fallacious and fleeting goods. It recommends, however, moral rewards, and promises future rewards that are no less chimerical. Then why not tell that young lady that the outward forms she admired, and her own life, were nothing but the products of the evil principle? Why not open her eyes to the truth, if she seemed so clever and so sensitive?... He wouldn't understand her. Discouragement is for pessimists, fatalists, faintheartedness. Those who have no fiber, those who have no faith, those who do not see beyond themselves, those who do not think that if the fruit of their work ripens too late for them to taste it, their children, future generations, will taste it. Or why must I work zealously produce much, if those who produce less than I, through real inability or laziness, share exactly as I do in the enjoyment of goods? Isn't it better to take things more slowly, to rest often and for a long time?...”

“Today, say the socialists, those who work from morning to night struggle for life, while those who do nothing swim in plenty; Tomorrow those who produce little as well as those who produce much will swim in abundance: injustice for injustice's sake, who will not prefer the latter to the former?”

“"Now that [[Italy] is done, Italian kitchens should be unified!" «An arduous undertaking. They will be able to federate; if so!" Why is it said that the most violent revolutionaries become the most rigid tyrants? Between a revolutionary and an authoritarian who seem to be two absolutely different men, incapable of ever being able to understand each other, the difference must not be very great, if the one is capable of changing into the other and the other into the one. Convenience, usefulness, advantage, may suggest to each one a certain profession of faith, interested, and therefore liable to be cancelled when the advantage fails, but who can boast of being entirely disinterested? The quality of interest changes: material or moral, direct or indirect, present or future, real or imaginary; but always, among all the opinions that clash within us and that we all recognize as true, we express some for a special reason... To preach death to men, by word or example, has been, and always will be, in vain. One can recognize evil, but it is so much that it does not allow itself to be overcome. Indian sages have preached abstinence and extolled Nirvana. The bravest revealer of pain and evil has conceived the suicide of the Earth; With what effect? Where are the works, the actions, the attempts, a principle of execution?”

“According to Spencer, words are like tokens: the value of these and the meaning of those depend on the general convention. If death is the necessary end of life, all wisdom consists in hastening its attainment.”

“If Massimo Taparelli D'Azeglio, after having cried out: Out with the foreigner, was seized with the doubt of whether he was a foreigner, the Prince of Francalanza was exempt from such scruples.”

“«Ladies and gentlemen, once upon a time there was a critic who, affirming with extraordinary warmth the superiority of [[Torquato Tasso]'s Gerusalemme liberata over [[Ludovico Ariosto]|Lodovico Ariosto]], engaged in many quarrels with people who did not think as he did, and thus sustained one after the other no less than fourteen fortunate duels; but on the fifteenth, he fell at last with his chest pierced by the enemy's blade. Then the godfathers, who were very afflicted and were waiting to collect his last wishes, heard him come out in this supreme confession: "And to say that I have not yet read either Orlando furioso or Gerusalemme liberata...."”

“The intelligence and passion that consume the characters to the point of stripping them of their flesh (the only one that can be concretely represented is the enormous and violent Don Blasco of the Viceroys) are the two poles between which the style also moves. Intellectualism, on the other hand, means that the author and the characters always have a certain understanding for the ideas of others that makes them descend without realizing the slope of transformism, which ends up becoming an indispensable feature of politics and definitively expels its morality, which in its impotence reaffirms the verdict on the world. (Caesar Cases)”

“Realist or psychologist? { {sic|Federigo de}} Roberto, a shrewd investigator of spiritual impulses as well as of aesthetic attitudes, can justly boast of having driven to despair those very numerous colleagues of his who esteem the classification of every writer within the strict limits of a formula as the chief aim of criticism. And easy critics, disposed to be content and take advantage of appearances, might believe that he had deliberately sought to elude such a classification—which, moreover, very often resembles a —by the constant simultaneous multiplicity of manifestations to which he has gradually bent his genius. Realist or psychologist? (Luigi Federzoni)”