A Quote by Italo Calvino

The soul is often in the surface, and the importance of 'depth' is overestimated.

Italo Calvino

Quote Topics

Depth Importance Often Soul Surface

Quote Author

Italo Calvino
Italian - Journalist
October 15, 1923 - September 19, 1985

Nature is more depth than surface, the colours are the expressions on the surface of this depth; they rise up from the roots of the world.

Paul Cezanne

A painting is nothing more than light reflected from the surface of a pigment-covered canvas. But a great painter can make you see the depth, make you feel the underlying emotion, make you sense the larger world. That, too, is the power of science: to sense and convey the depth and dimensionality of nature, to glance at the surface and to divine the shape of the universe around us.

Carl Safina

The importance of these [college] years for an American cannot be overestimated. They are civilization's only chance to get to him.

Allan Bloom

I would like to start by emphasizing the importance of surfaces. It is at a surface where many of our most interesting and useful phenomena occur. We live for example on the surface of a planet. It is at a surface where the catalysis of chemical reactions occur. It is essentially at a surface of a plant that sunlight is converted to a sugar. In electronics, most if not all active circuit elements involve non-equilibrium phenomena occurring at surfaces. Much of biology is concerned with reactions at a surface.

Walter Houser Brattain

Mothers are the heart and soul of every life they touch. In them lies the beauty, depth and grandeur of life. Cherish the Children is an inspirational expression of the importance of a Mother's work.

Jane Clayson Johnson

The importance of fear as a factor in war-making cannot be overlooked, and can hardly be overestimated. Any politician can play on panic when he wishes to stampede a people into war.

Maude Royden

More often than not, Americans and Westerners overestimated the power and capability of the Soviet Union.

Alexander Haig

Hitler overestimated the importance of [technology]. As a result, he would count on a mere handful of assault-gun detachment or the new Tiger tanks to restore situations where only large bodies of troops could have any prospect of success.

Erich von Manstein

Prayer from the depth and prayer from the surface are two prayers. One can utter what Christ has called 'vain repetitions', just repeating the prayer; one does not fix one's mind on the meaning of the prayer. If the depth of one's heart has heard the prayer, God has heard it.

Hazrat Inayat Khan

Depth must be hidden. Where? On the surface.

Hugo von Hofmannsthal

It is indeed my opinion now that evil is never “radical,” that it is only extreme, and that it possess neither depth nor any demonic dimension. It can overgrow and lay waste the whole world precisely because it spreads like fungus on the surface. It is “thought-defying,” as I said, because thought tries to reach some depth, to go to the roots, and the moment it concerns itself with evil, it is frustrated because there is nothing. That is its “banality.” Only the good has depth and can be radical.

Hannah Arendt

If I do talk politics it's very surface, it's not in-depth.

Brad Williams

I have often spoken about the importance of intentionality in philanthropy: that it has to stir the soul. This is true whether you are feeding the homeless, mentoring a child or working on climate change.