A Quote by Mary McCarthy

Venice, as a city, was a foundling, floating upon the waters like Moses in his basket among the bulrushes.

Mary McCarthy

Quote Topics

Among Basket City Floating His Like Moses Venice Waters

Quote Author

Mary McCarthy
American - Novelist
June 21, 1912 - October 25, 1989

Venice, that capital city of dream and intrigue, that double city (one above and seemingly solid, one below, wavering and reflected in the waters), which never disappoints.

Erica Jong

Venice is the perfect place for a phase of art to die. No other city on earth embraces entropy quite like this magical floating mall.

Jerry Saltz

England may as well dam up the waters of the Nile with bulrushes as to fetter the step of Freedom, more proud and firm in this youthful land than where she treads the sequestered glens of Scotland, or couches herself among the magnificent mountains of Switzerland.

Lydia M. Child

Nothing but a speck we seem In the waste of waters round, Floating, floating like a dream, Outward bound.

Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

It is not surprising that Venice is known above all for mirrors and glass since Venice is the most narcissistic city in the world, the city that celebrates self-mirroring.

Erica Jong

[On Venice:] A wondrous city of fairest carving, reflected in gleaming waters swirled to new patterning by every passing gondola.

Sylvia Pankhurst

Jose Palacios, his oldest servant, found him floating naked with his eyes open in the purifying waters of his bath and thought he had drowned.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Moses lifting up his wand, and dividing the Red Sea, and Pharaoh in his chariot overwhelmed with the waters. This motto: "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God."

Benjamin Franklin

Identity is not found, the way Pharaoh's daughter found Moses in the bulrushes. Identity is built.

Margaret Halsey

It is always assumed that Venice is the ideal place for a honeymoon. This is a grave error. To live in Venice or even to visit it means that you fall in love with the city itself. There is nothing left over in your heart for anyone else.

Peggy Guggenheim

My father was into fame and leaving his mark. He was a city planner, sort of a genius in that world, the Robert Moses of Philadelphia. He was on the cover of 'Time' once, and I remember going to his office and seeing, like, two hundred copies, which he would hand out to people.

Kevin Bacon

When I went to Europe for the first time, I went to Paris and then to Venice. So after Paris, Venice was my first great European city, and it just blew me away.

James Ivory

There is still one of which you never speak.' Marco Polo bowed his head. 'Venice,' the Khan said. Marco smiled. 'What else do you believe I have been talking to you about?' The emperor did not turn a hair. 'And yet I have never heard you mention that name.' And Polo said: 'Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice.

Italo Calvino

... in the eyes of its visitors, Venice has no reality of its own. Anyone visiting the place has already seen so many pictures of it that they can only attempt to view it via these clichés, and they take home photographs of Venice that are similar to the ones they already knew. Venice [is] becoming like one of those painted backdrops that photographers use in their studio.