Yet he thought, if I die saying ” Life is beautiful”, then nothing else is important.
Genius had its rewards.
Do not exercise power because it is easy to your hand. And do not get carried away with a certainty of victory when your intellect tells you there is even a hint of tragedy.
Santino, never let anyone outside the Family know what you are thinking. Never let them know what you have under your fingernails.
A belief in one’s own virtue is far more dangerous than a belief in one’s cunning.
Friendship is more than talent. It is more than government. It is almost the equal of family. Never forget that.
But della Rovere frowned and said, “Heed my warning, Guido Feltra. He’s full of the devil, this son of the church.
He said to the cardinal, “I’m a peasant, not instructed in the ways of heaven. But I have never broken my word. And you, a Cardinal of the Catholic Church, with all your holy garments and crosses of Jesus, lied to me like a heathen Moor. Your sacred office alone will not save your life.
Mercy is a vice, a pretension to powers we do not have. Those who give mercy commit an unpardonable offense to the victim. And that is not our duty here on earth.
The Don knew that love is not a reliable emotion to matter how deep. Love does not ensure gratitude, does not ensure obedience, does not provide harmony in so difficult a world. No one understood this better than Don Clericuzio.
Always remember that and live your life not to be a hero but to remain alive. With time, heroes seem a little foolish.
Early on he had been told the famous maxim of American justice, that it was better that a hundred men go free than that one innocent man be punished. Struck almost dumb by the beauty of the concept, he became an ardent patriot. America was his country. He would never leave America.
As bread is sweet to us,” he said, “so is the blood of the poor to the rich who drink it.” It.
It was understood, it was mere good manners, to proclaim that you were in his debt and that he had the right to call upon you at any time to redeem your debt by some small service. Now.
In short, the gabbellotto was a mafioso who for a certain sum of money protected the real estate of the rich from all claims made on it by the poor, legal or illegal. When any poor peasant tried to implement the law which permitted him to buy uncultivated land, the gabbellotto frightened him off with threats of bodily harm or death. It was that simple.
You know, it’s a funny thing. You can smoke yourself to death, drink yourself to death, work yourself to death, and even eat yourself to death. But that’s all acceptable. The only thing you can’t do medically is screw yourself to death, and yet that’s where they put all the obstacles.
It’s more important that you grow up to be a man,” he said, “than to be a genius.
Other people veto their existence. I don’t let anyone do that.
The Don sighed. “Well, then I can’t talk to you about how you should behave. Don’t you want to finish school, don’t you want to be a lawyer? Lawyers can steal more money with a briefcase than a thousand men with guns and masks.
These things have to happen once every ten years or so. It gets rid of the bad blood. And then if we let them push us around on the little things they wanta take over everything. You gotta stop them at the beginning. Like they shoulda stopped Hitler at Munich, they should never let him get away with that, they were just asking for big trouble when they let him get away with that.” Michael.