The name of Italy has magic in its very syllables.

Italy is only a geographical expression.

Cradle of Letters ! Mistress of the World !
Soil of the Sun ! Italia! I salute thee !
How oft the human race have worn thy yoke.
The vessels of thine arms, thine arts, thy sky !

The Italian nation rose, as did all the others in Europe, about the close of the Middle Ages; but its birth was different. Italy was not the creation of kings and warriors; she was the creature of a poet, Dante.
The foreigners who identify Italy with Dante are essentially right. His character and work had a decisive influence which grew in the centuries, until they became paramount to the leading class of the Italian people. It is hardly an exaggeration to hold that he was to Italy what Moses may have been to Israel.

Iuravit in mea verba tota Italia.

Do you remember Italy?

Haec est Italia diis sacra

Let Rome be glorious on the earth,
The centre of Italian worth.

Italy is, after France and perhaps in the same degree, the land in which love of country has the deepest roots in the hearts of its inhabitants. The fact is that perhaps nowhere else has nature been so prodigal with its enchantments and seductions. Therefore, although Italy has been, since the fall of the Caesars, the object of European covetousness, the eternal battlefield of powerful neighbors, and the theatre of the fiercest and most prolonged civil wars, her children have always refused to leave her. Save for some commercial colonies hastily thrown upon the shores of Asia by Genoa and Venice, history has not, in fact, recorded in Italy any important outward movement of population.

Italian language is not just sonore. It is also visual.

Italian in the mouth of Italians is a deep-voiced stream, with unexpected cataracts and boulders to preserve it from monotony. In Mr. Eager's mouth it resembled nothing so much as an acid whistling fountain which played ever higher and higher, and quicker and quicker, and more and more shrilly, till abruptly it was turned off with a click.

Please note that in Kabbalistic terms "Israel" refers to a spiritual nation, rather than a religious faith or a nation-state.

National pride has no need of the delirium of race. Anti-Semitism does not exist in Italy… Whenever things go awry in Germany, the Jews are blamed for it.

It is fate that I am here,' George persisted, 'but you can call it Italy if it makes you less unhappy.