All roads do not lead to Rome.

Slovenian proverbs
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Step by step one goes to Rome.

Italian proverbs
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We cannot all be Pope of Rome.

German proverbs
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Ideals

Better than land or gold or trade
Are a high ideal and a purpose true;
Better than all of the wealth we've made
Is the work for others that now we do.
For Rome grew rich and she turned to song
And danced to music and drank her wine,
But she sapped the strength of her fibres strong
And a gilded shroud was her splendor fine.

The Rome of old with its wealth and wine
Was the handiwork of a sturdy race;
They builded well and they made it fine
And they dreamed of it as their children's place.
They thought the joys they had won to give,
And which seemed so certain and fixed and sure,
To the end of time in the world would live
And the Rome they'd fashioned would long endure.

They passed to their children the hoarded gold,
Their marble halls and their fertile fields!

[...] Read more

poem by Edgar Albert Guest
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When in Rome, do as the Romans.

Sicilian proverbs
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Where the Pope is there is Rome.

Italian proverbs
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Thus again the Netherlands, for the first time since the fall of Rome, were united under one crown imperial. They had already been once united, in their slavery to Rome.

quote by John Lothrop Motley
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Every one soon or late comes round by Rome.

quote by Robert Browning Hamilton
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A man may speir the gate to Rome.

Scotch proverbs
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Every road does not lead to Rome.

Slovenian proverbs
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He who has a tongue goes to Rome.

Spanish proverbs
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When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

English proverbs
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The Roman Gravemounds

By Rome's dim relics there walks a man,
Eyes bent; and he carries a basket and spade;
I guess what impels him to scrape and scan;
Yea, his dreams of that Empire long decayed.

'Vast was Rome,' he must muse, 'in the worlds regard,
Vast it looms there still, Vast it ever will be;'
And he stoops as to dig and unmine some shard
Left by those who are held in such memory.

But no; in his basket, see, he has brought
A little white furred thing, stiff of limb,
Whose life never won from the world a thought;
It is this, and not Rome, that is moving him.

And to make it a grave he has come to the spot,
And he delves in the ancient dead's long home;

[...] Read more

poem by Thomas Hardy
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Roman Elegies I

Tell me you stones, O speak, you towering palaces!
Streets, say a word! Spirit of this place, are you dumb?
All things are alive in your sacred walls
eternal Rome, only for me all’s still.
Who will whisper to me, at what window
will I see the sweet thing who will kindle me, and quicken?
Already I guess the ways, walking to her and from her,
ever and always I’ll go, while sweet time slips by.
I’m gazing at church and palace, ruin and column,
like a serious man making sensible use of a journey,
but soon it will happen, and all will be one vast temple,
Love’s temple, receiving its new initiate.
Though you are a whole world, Rome, still, without Love,
the world’s not the world, Rome cannot be Rome.

poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Rome was great in arms, in government, in law.

quote by Goldwin Smith
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When in Rome, do as you done in Milledgeville.

quote by Flannery O'Connor
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Rome had Senators too, that's why it declined.

quote by Frank Dane
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Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city.

quote by Anatole Broyard
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He who has a tongue, may go to Rome.

Italian proverbs
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Rome was not bigged on the first Day.

Scotch proverbs
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