Цитаты из книги Крестный отец

But time erodes gratitude more quickly than it does beauty.

But great men are not born great, they grow great, and so it was with Vito Corleone.

“I’ll reason with him,” Vito Corleone said. It was to become a famous phrase in the years to come. It was to become the warning rattle before a deadly strike. When he became a Don and asked opponents to sit down and reason with him, they understood it was the last chance to resolve an affair without bloodshed and murder.

The statesman forced to go to war, the lawyer forced to go to law.

But there are times when the most extreme measures are justified.

Don Corleone, still not fully conscious of what had happened to him the day before, in terrible pain, yet smiled benevolently on his youngest son, wanting to tell him, but it was too much effort, “Why should I be afraid now? Strange men have come to kill me ever since I was twelve years old.”

Clemenza went out to see what was happening. When he came back he was holding Luca Brasi’s bulletproof vest in his hands. Wrapped in the vest was a huge dead fish...The fish means that Luca Brasi is sleeping on the bottom of the ocean...It’s an old Sicilian message.

Sollozzo is a proven man, they know he can make the operation go on a big scale. Alive he’s money in their pockets, dead he’s trouble.

The Don always taught that when a man was generous, he must show the generosity as personal.

Don Corleone himself was not angry. He had long ago learned that society imposes insults that must be borne, comforted by the knowledge that in this world there comes a time when the most humble of men, if he keeps his eyes open, can take his revenge on the most powerful. It was this knowledge that prevented the Don from losing the humility all his friends admired in him.

All his years in America, Amerigo Bonasera had trusted in law and order.

Behind every great fortune there is a crime.  - Balzac

Ничего личного. Только бизнес.

Есть вещи, которые приходится делать — их делаешь, но о них никогда не говоришь. Их не пытаешься оправдать. Им нет оправданий. Их просто делаешь, и все. И забываешь.

Говорить людям "нет" надо так, чтобы твое "нет" звучало как "да". Вообще надо избегать слова "нет" с людьми, которых любишь. Во всяком случае, использовать отказ как можно реже, а если уж совсем некуда деваться - пусть сами придут к мысли о полной бесперспективности, пусть сами додумаются до твоего "нет".

Всегда лучше когда друзья недооценивают твои достоинства, а враг преувеличивает недостатки

But something has to be done, we just can’t let people do as they please and make trouble for everyone.