“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.”

—  Mary McCarthy

Source: Venice Observed (1956), Ch. 1

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The rationalist mind has always had its doubts about Venice. The watery city receives a dry inspection, as though it we…" by Mary McCarthy?
Mary McCarthy photo
Mary McCarthy 79
American writer 1912–1989

Related quotes

Patricia Highsmith photo

“He liked the fact that Venice had no cars. It made the city human. The streets were like veins, he thought, and the people were the blood, circulating everywhere.”

Patricia Highsmith book The Talented Mr. Ripley

Source: The Talented Mr. Ripley

David Fleming photo

“Every civilisation has had its irrational but reassuring myth. Previous civilisations have used their culture to sing about it and tell stories about it. Ours has used its mathematics to prove it.”

David Fleming (1940–2010) British activist

Surviving the Future, (2016), p. 180, Epilogue http://www.flemingpolicycentre.org.uk/lean-logic-surviving-the-future/

Eugène Boudin photo

“[Venice is] somewhat disguised by the artists who usually paint Venice, who have disfigured it by turning it into a city heated by the brightest and hottest sun. On the contrary, Venice, like all luminous cities, has a grey hue, the atmosphere is mild and misty and the sky arrays itself with clouds, just like the sky of our Norman and Dutch regions.”

Eugène Boudin (1824–1898) French painter

Quote of Boudin's letter, from Venice, 1895; to art-dealer Durand-Ruel; as cited in 'Venice, The Grand Canal' 1895, by Anne-Marie Bergeret-Gourbin https://www.museothyssen.org/en/collection/artists/boudin-eugene/venice-grand-canal, Museo Thyssen
1880s - 1890s

Napoleon I of France photo

“Europe has its history, often tragic, though at intervals consoling. But to speak of any universally recognized national rights or that these rights have played any part in its history, is to play with the powers of public credulity. Always the first duty of a state has been its safety; the pledge of its safety, its power; and the limits of its power, that intelligence of which each has been made the depository. When the great powers have proclaimed any other principle, it has been only for their own purposes, and the smaller powers have never received any benefit from it.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

Al-Maʿarri photo

“A little doubt is better than total credulity.”

Al-Maʿarri (973–1057) Medieval Arab philosopher

As quoted in Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out (2003) by Ibn Warraq, p. 68

P. L. Travers photo

“The true fairytales … come straight out of myth; they are, as it were, minuscule reaffirmation of myths, or perhaps the myth made accessible to the local folky mind.”

P. L. Travers (1899–1996) Australian-British novelist, actress and journalist

Source: Myth, Symbol, and Meaning in Mary Poppins (2007), Ch. 2, p. 39
Context: The true fairytales … come straight out of myth; they are, as it were, minuscule reaffirmation of myths, or perhaps the myth made accessible to the local folky mind. One might say that fairytales are the myths falling into time and locality … is the same stuff, all the essentials are there, it is small, but perfect. Not minimized, not to be made digestible for children.

“Out of the beliefs nourished by the agrarian myth there had arisen the notion that the city was a parasitical growth on the country. Bryan spoke for a people raised for generations on the idea that the farmer was a very special creature, blessed by God, and that in a country consisting largely of farmers the voice of the farmer was the voice of democracy and of virtue itself. The agrarian myth encouraged farmers to believe that they were not themselves an organic part of the whole order of business enterprise and speculation that flourished in the city, partaking of its character and sharing in its risks, but rather the innocent pastoral victims of a conspiracy hatched in the distance. The notion of an innocent and victimized populace colors the whole history of agrarian controversy, and indeed the whole history of the populistic mind.”

Richard Hofstadter (1916–1970) American historian

Source: The Age of Reform: from Bryan to F.D.R. (1955), Chapter I, part I, p. 35

Robert Burton photo

“The commonwealth of Venice in their armory have this inscription: "Happy is that city which in time of peace thinks of war."”

Robert Burton book The Anatomy of Melancholy

Section 2, member 6, Perturbations of the mind rectified. From himself, by resisting to the utmost, confessing his grief to a friend, etc.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part II

W. Edwards Deming photo

“We cannot rely on mass inspection to improve quality, though there are times when 100 percent inspection is necessary. As Harold S. Dodge said many years ago, 'You cannot inspect quality into a product.' The quality is there or it isn't by the time it's inspected.”

W. Edwards Deming (1900–1993) American professor, author, and consultant

Source: Out Of The Crisis (1982), p. 139

Related topics