Quotes from Venice Observed — Mary McCarthy
1947–1989 United States
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5 quotes
The rationalist mind has always had its doubts about Venice. The watery city receives a dry inspection, as though it were a myth for the credulous — poets and honeymooners.
Venice Observed (1956)
The Florentines, who were incapable of ruling themselves, produced a great theorist of government: Machiavelli. The Venetians had no theorists and evolved a model Republic.
Venice Observed (1956)
St Mary of Egypt […] has, by the way, two qualifications for being a Venetian saint — first, she was a courtesan, and, second, when she died, her remains were buried by a pious lion.
Venice Observed (1956)
The Venetians invented the income tax, statistical science, the floating of government stock, state censorship of books, anonymous denunciations (the Bocca del Leone), the gambling casino, and the Ghetto.
Venice Observed (1956)
Among Venice's spells is one of peculiar potency: the power to awaken the philistine dozing in the skeptic's breast. People of this kind — dry, prose people of superior intelligence — object to feeling what they are supposed to feel, in the presence of marvels. They wish to feel something else. The extreme of this position is to feel nothing.
Venice Observed (1956)