Sicily

Sicily (Italian: Sicilia, officially Regione Siciliana) is an island in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula in continental Europe and is one of the 20 regions of Italy.

Quotes

• Such has been the fate of Sicily for ages: ever the milch-cow, drained both of milk and blood by a foreign master. Her only hours of independence and of healthy existence have been under her tyrants, the Dionysiuses and the Gelons. They alone rendered her formidable abroad. Since then, she has been a constant slave. Firstly, it is in her bosom, that all the great quarrels of the ancient world have been decided — Athens and Syracuse, Greece and Carthage, Carthage and Rome, have made her their battle-field; and, lastly, there the servile wars were fought out. All these solemn battles of mankind have been contested within sight of Etna — like the "Judgment of God" before the altar. Then come the Barbarians, Arabs, Normans, Germans. Each time that Sicily hopes and desires, each time she suffers; she turns, and then back to the same side, like Enceladus under the volcano. Such are the weakness and incurable irreconcilableness of a people composed of twenty races, and so heavily oppressed by the double fatality of history and climate.
  • Jules Michelet, History of France, translated by G. H. Smith, vol. 1 (New York, 1882), pp. 338–339

• She dreams of Love, upon the temple stair,
  In all the drowsy, warm, Sicilian air.
  • Robert Cameron Rogers, "A Sleeping Priestess of Aphrodite", The Wind in the Clearing, &c. (1894), p. 41

• Now let hot Etna cool in Sicily,
  And be my heart an ever-burning hell!
  • William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, act 3, sc. 1 (Marcus)

• The climate’s delicate; the air most sweet,
  Fertile the isle, the temple much surpassing
  The common praise it bears.
  • William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale, act 3, sc. 1 (Cleomenes)

• O Singer of Persephone!
  Dost thou remember Sicily?
  • Oscar Wilde, "Theocritus: A Villanelle", Poems (1878), p. 138

• They never want to improve. They think themselves perfect. Their vanity is greater than their misery.
  • The Leopard (1963 film)