Marco Polo Quotes

“Marco Polo aprendeu a ultrapassar a sua condição de estrangeiro no Império Mongol, para chegar à conclusão de que, agora que estava em casa, tinha-se tornado uma vez mais um estrangeiro.”
― Laurence Bergreen, Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu

“Depois de todos os hábitos de acasalamento e comportamentos que (Marco Polo) presenciara na Ásia, a ideia de monogamia conjugal talvez não fosse de todo bem-vinda.”
― Laurence Bergreen, Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu

“O mundo que Marco Polo explorou está perdido para a História de muitas maneiras, mas alguns aspectos importantes do retrato que ele traça são surpreendentemente contemporâneos. Como mercador, compreendeu que o comércio era a essência das relações internacionais e que ele se sobrepunha aos sistemas políticos e às crenças religiosas, que são autolimitadores”
― Laurence Bergreen, Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu

“sprezzatura,”
― Laurence Bergreen, Marco Polo

“Venedik, tamamı 118 tane olan bir dizi cezbedici adanın ortasında düşmanlarından korunuyordu.”
― Laurence Bergreen, Marco Polo: De Venecia a Xanadú

“Carnival (literally, the playful “bidding farewell to meat” before Lent).”
― Laurence Bergreen, Marco Polo

“Contrary to myth, Marco Polo did not introduce noodles to Italy; his anonymous predecessors had.”
― Laurence Bergreen, Marco Polo

“His choice was Xanadu—a name that came to sound endlessly romantic and evocative to Westerners, but which simply meant “the Upper Capital,” because it lay north of the winter capital in Cambulac.”
― Laurence Bergreen, Marco Polo

“In the multilingual Mongol Empire, the new capital was known by several names. The Chinese called it Ta-tu, “Great Capital.” The Turks knew it as Khanbalikh—which Marco spelled “Cambulac”—“City of the Khan.” And the Mongols, adapting the Chinese name, called it Daidu. Today the city is known as Beijing.”
― Laurence Bergreen, Marco Polo

“The plentiful black stones making possible all this cooking, heating, and bathing were lumps of coal, a source of energy that had been used throughout China for at least a thousand years. Yet in Marco’s day, the notion of burning coal rather than wood for heat was practically unheard of in Europe. The existence of this black, dusty, carbon-rich substance had been noted at infrequent intervals throughout Western history, beginning with the Roman occupation of Britain and continuing to Marco’s time, but not until the eighteenth century did coal become a common source of energy in European countries.”
― Laurence Bergreen, Marco Polo

“Known today as the Marco Polo Bridge, this structure is essentially the same as the day Marco traversed it. Completed in 1192, it is also called the Guangli Bridge, and its stone span reaches across the banks of the Lugou River.”
― Laurence Bergreen, Marco Polo

“In China, a single cultivated species of moth became identified with silk, the blind and flightless Bombyx mori, whose ancestor Bombyx mandarina Moore fed on the leaves of the white mulberry tree.”
― Laurence Bergreen, Marco Polo

“Paper money, virtually unknown in the West until Marco’s return, revolutionized finance and commerce throughout the West. Coal, another item that had caught Marco’s attention in China, provided a new and relatively efficient source of heat to an energy-starved Europe. Eyeglasses (in the form of ground lenses), which some accounts say he brought back with him, became accepted as a remedy for failing eyesight. In addition, lenses gave rise to the telescope—which in turn revolutionized naval battles, since it allowed combatants to view ships at a great distance—and the microscope. Two hundred years later, Galileo used the telescope—based on the same technology—to revolutionize science and cosmology by supporting and disseminating the Copernican theory that Earth and other planets revolved around the Sun. Gunpowder, which the Chinese had employed for at least three centuries, revolutionized European warfare as armies exchanged their lances, swords, and crossbows for cannon, portable harquebuses, and pistols. Marco brought back gifts of a more personal nature as well. The golden paiza, or passport, given to him by Kublai Khan had seen him through years of travel, war, and hardship. Marco kept it still, and would to the end of his days. He also brought back a Mongol servant, whom he named Peter, a living reminder of the status he had once enjoyed in a far-off land. In all, it is difficult to imagine the Renaissance—or, for that matter, the modern world—without the benefit of Marco Polo’s example of cultural transmission between East and West.”
― Laurence Bergreen, Marco Polo

“Arthur N. Waldron, writing in the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, demonstrated that the Great Wall was constructed during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), long after Marco Polo’s day.”
― Laurence Bergreen, Marco Polo