Mestre Quotes

“Mestre. Say the word without hissing the conurbated villain, and pitying its citizens. As quickly as they can, two million tourists pass through, or by, Mestre each year, and each one will be struck by the same thought as they wonder at the aesthetic opposition that it represents. Mestre is an ugly town but ugly only in the same way that Michael Jackson might be desccribed as eccentric or a Tabasco Vindaloo flambéed in rocket fuel might be described as warm. Mestre is almost excremental in its hideousness: a fetid, fly-blown, festering, industrial urbanization, scarred with varicose motorways, flyovers, rusting railway sidings and the rubbish of a billion holidaymakers gradually burning, spewing thick black clouds into the Mediterranean sky. A town with apparently no centre, a utilitarian ever-expandable wasteland adapted to house the displaced poor, the shorebound, outpriced, domicile-deprived exiles from its neighbouring city. For, just beyond the condom- and polystyrene-washed, black-stained, mud shores of Marghera, Mestre's very own oil refinery, less than a mile away across the waters of the lagoon in full sight of its own dispossessed citizens, is the Jewel of Adriatic. Close enough for all to feel the magnetism, there stands the most beautiful icon of Renaissance glory and, like so much that can attract tourism, a place too lovely to be left in the hands of its natives, the Serenissima itself, Venice.”
― Marius Brill, Making Love: A Conspiracy of the Heart

“Os grandes mestres da moral nunca introduzem morais novas - são os chamados charlatões que fazem isso.”
― C.S. Lewis, Cristianismo Puro e Simples

“Sonhei com um paíz onde todos chegavam a Mestres. Começava cada qual por fazer a caneta e o aparo com que se punha á escuta do universo; em seguida, fabricava desde a materia prima o papel onde ia assentando as confidencias que recebia directamente
do universo; depois, descia até ao fundo dos rochedos por causa da
tinta negra dos chócos; gravava letra por letra o tipo com que compunha
as suas palavras; e arrancava da arvore a prensa onde apertava
com segurança as descobertas para irem ter com os outros. Era assim que neste país todos chegavam a Mestres. Era assim que os Mestres iam escrevendo as frases que hão-de salvar a humanidade.”
― José de Almada Negreiros, A Invenção do Dia Claro

“Dia feliz ou triste, um sorriso que nada custa para mudar o mundo e alegrar o coração do desconhecido.”
― Modeste Herlic, AVENTURAS? Por que não?: Conversas sobre espiritualidade.