Pietro Metastasio Quotes

Love is a feeling that comes into our hearts of our own choice for neither force nor harshness can limit the heart’s freedom.

The bee and the serpent often sip from the selfsame flower.

If every man’s internal care Were written on his brow, How many would our pity share Who raise our envy now?

If our inward griefs were written on our brows, how many who are envied now would be pitied. It would seem that they had their deadliest foe in their own breast, and their whole happiness would be reduced to mere seeming.

Every noble acquisition is attended with its risks; he who fears to encounter the one must not expect to obtain the other.

If our inward griefs were seen written on our brow, how many would be pitied who are now envied! [It., Se a ciascun l’interno affanno Si leggesse in fronte scritto, Quanti mai, che invidia fanno, Ci farebbero pieta!].

If the internal griefs of every man could be read, written on his forehead, how many who now excite envy would appear to be the objects of pity?

High birth is an accident, not a virtue.

We are like vessels tossed on the bosom of the deep; our passions are the winds that sweep us impetuously forward; each pleasure is a rock; the whole life is a wide ocean. Reason is the pilot to guide us, but often allows itself to be led astray by the storms of pride.

The canker which the trunk conceals is revealed by the leaves, the fruit, or the flower.

Fortune is the best school of courage when she is fraught with anger, in the same way as winds and tempests are the school of the sailorboy.

It is by no means a fact that death is the worst of all evils; when it comes it is an alleviation to mortals who are worn out with sufferings.