Quotes About Rome

Today, for the first time in history, a Bishop of Rome sets foot on English soil. This fair land, once a distant outpost of the pagan world, has become, through the preaching of the Gospel, a beloved and gifted portion of Christ's vineyard.

There were dozens of people who walked through the Holy Land claiming to be the Messiah, curing the sick, exorcising demons, challenging Rome, gathering followers. In a way, there's nothing unique about what Jesus did. In fact, many of these so-called false Messiahs we know by name.

I walked across Tuscany from Siena to Rome, which was a lovely way to see the landscape. It was sunny but not too hot, and we made detours to look at treasures - churches, paintings, little hill villages. The first couple of days, you feel your knees are turning to jelly. But, at the end, you feel very limber. I hope I can always do it.

I remember the Curia said, that's up to the American bishops, not up to Rome.

When I came at last to Rome, and saw with eyes the pictures, I found that genius left to novices the gay and fantastic and ostentatious, and itself pierce directly to the simple and true; that it was familiar and sincere; that it was the old, eternal fact I had met already in so many forms, --- unto which I lived.

Three days later on October 29, 1959, the Pontiac registered in the name of Niles Tignor would be discovered, gas tank near-empty, keys on the floorboards beneath the front seat, in a parking lot close by the Greyhound bus station in Rome, New York.

And such is the power of the organization so introduced, that even when life shall appear to desert it, and its destruction by the barbarians inevitable, they will submit to its yoke. Despite themselves, they must dwell under the everlasting roofs which mock their efforts at destruction: they will bow the head, and, victors as they are, receive laws from vanquished Rome. ... Such is the work of civil order.

I think the attitude is characteristically western. We feel more affinity with Romulus and Remus than with Nero. We are still busy founding Rome while in New York they fiddle to celebrate its burning.

With this phrase he is insisting that his power is not grounded in the usual authority of empire; it is not an authority that comes out of the end of a gun or a cannon in coercive or violent ways. His kingdom, his claim to authority, is indeed "divine" in that it is rooted in and derived from "the will of the father," whose intention for the world is quite unlike the intent of Rome.

I have not been three days at Rome. How charming are the Italian women! Nature seems here to have concentrated all her beauties. In other countries she has bestow'd only one feature; but in Rome the countenance is perfect. There she has given souls without bodies; here they both exist in the same being.

Aloïs Hudal was an Austrian native, an anti-Semite, and a fervent Nazi. He used his position as rector of the Pontificio Santa Maria dell'Anima, the German seminary in Rome, to help hundreds of SS officers escape justice, including Franz Stangl, the commandant of Treblinka.

We will control the land of the Vatican. We will control Rome and introduce Islam in it. —SHEIKH MUHAMMAD BIN ABD AL-RAHMAN AL-ARIFI, Imam of the mosque at the King Fahd Defense Academy

Rome's earliest dissension arose from flawed human nature and its desires for freedom, glory, and power, but it was only after the fall of Carthage that such evils flourished to the point of driving plebeians and patricians into open conflict: "The way was clear for pursuing rivalries, [and] there arose a great many riots, insurrections, and in the end, civil wars."43

For many Romans, civil war remained the war that dared not speak its name. The words bellum civile had to be weighed carefully and spoken sparingly, if ever at all, because of the harsh memories of major conflicts.

New land for farming could be had merely by clearing it and sharing part of each new parcel with the appropriate local authorities. This process, known as assarting, gave a comfortable outlet for population growth for centuries after Rome fell. Assarting became particularly attractive in thinly populated northern regions after warmer temperatures in the eighth century made farming more productive.

Part of the reason that Rome fell is simply that it had expanded beyond the scale at which the economies of violence could be maintained. The cost of garrisoning the empire's far-flung borders exceeded the economic advantages that an ancient agricultural economy could support. The burden of taxation and regulation required to finance the military effort rose to exceed the carrying capacity of the economy. Corruption became endemic.

Part of the reason that Rome fell is simply that it had expanded beyond the scale at which the economies of violence could be maintained.

Another important contributing factor to Rome's collapse was a demographic deficit caused by the Antonine plagues.

seventeenth century, Pope Leo XIII

In Rome there is a pathological shortage of small coins. For change, the little shops tend to use candy.

No," said Erskine of Dun. "Come naked of creed or of kind or even of purpose, but bring with you what Orkney saw, all those years ago. We are too small a nation to be able to spare saints to Rome or Geneva, or any other refugees seeking to glorify either the flesh or the spirit. There is no one to understand us, except ourselves." "That I know," said Francis Crawford.

Never mind," said Ford. "Rome wasn't burned in a day.

Ave, Cæsar! te morituri salutant,

Augustine's final verdict on the philosophers of Greece and Rome was that, although they had made various mistakes, "nature itself has not permitted them to wander too far from the path of truth" in their judgments about the supreme good (De Civitate Dei 19.1).