The Leopard

by

Giuseppe Di Lampedusa

Concetta is the Prince and Princess’s second-oldest daughter and the Prince’s favorite of the girls. She is King Ferdinand’s goddaughter. Concetta has a submissive attitude toward her father but is also capable of great stubbornness. She is in love with her cousin, Tancredi. After the revolution, however, she is offended by Tancredi’s coarseness and heartbroken when he falls for Angelica instead. Though Tancredi makes an indirect attempt to propose to her—trying to gain admittance to the convent that only Salina men may visit—she misunderstands it and coldly rebuffs him. After the Prince arranges Tancredi’s marriage to Angelica, Concetta spends the rest of her life nursing a grudge against Tancredi and her father. In old age, Concetta, unmarried, inherits the Salina villa along with Caterina and Carolina. Her prideful, authoritarian air is the only surviving trace of the Salina legacy, as the Prince had always predicted. When Tancredi’s old friend Tassoni tells her that Tancredi always loved her, Concetta throws away a rug made from Bendicò the dog, the only family relic she had ever liked. This marks her realization that her Salina pride has been her undoing.

Concetta Salina Quotes in The Leopard

The The Leopard quotes below are all either spoken by Concetta Salina or refer to Concetta Salina. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Cultural Survival and Decline Theme Icon
).
Chapter 2. Donnafugata Quotes

The soul of the Prince reached out toward them, toward the intangible, the unattainable, which gave joy without laying claim to anything in return; as many other times, he tried to imagine himself in those icy tracts, a pure intellect armed with a notebook for calculations: difficult calculations, but ones which would always work out. “They’re the only really genuine, the only really decent beings,” thought he, in his worldly formulae. “Who worries about dowries for the Pleiades, a political career for Sirius, matrimonial joy for Vega?”

Related Characters: Prince Don Fabrizio Corbèra (speaker), Tancredi Falconeri, Concetta Salina
Related Symbols: Stars
Page Number: 83
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8. Relics Quotes

To her the removal of those objects was a matter of indifference; what did touch her, the day’s real thorn, was the appalling figure the Salina family would now cut with the ecclesiastical authorities, and soon with the entire city. […] And the Church’s esteem meant much to her. The prestige of her name had slowly disappeared; the family fortune, divided and subdivided, was at best equivalent to that of any number of other lesser families and very much smaller than that of some rich industrialists. But in the Church, in their relations with it, the Salinas had maintained their pre-eminence. What a reception His Eminence had given the three sisters when they went to make their Christmas visit! Would that happen now?

Related Characters: Father Pirrone, Concetta Salina
Page Number: 267
Explanation and Analysis:

Until today, on the rare occasions when she thought over what had happened at Donnafugata that distant summer, she had felt upheld by a sense of being martyred, being wronged, of resentment against a father who had neglected her, of torturing emotion for that other dead man. Now, however, these secondhand feelings which had formed the skeleton of her whole mode of thought were also collapsing. There had been no enemies, just one single adversary, herself; her future had been killed by her own imprudence, by the rash Salina pride[.]

Related Characters: Prince Don Fabrizio Corbèra , Tancredi Falconeri, Concetta Salina, Angelica Sedàra, Senator Tassoni
Page Number: 273
Explanation and Analysis:

As the carcass was dragged off, the glass eyes stared at her with the humble reproach of things that are thrown away, that are being annulled. A few minutes later what remained of Bendicò was flung into a corner of the courtyard visited every day by the dustman. During the flight down from the window his form recomposed itself for an instant; in the air one could have seen dancing a quadruped with long whiskers, and its right foreleg seemed to be raised in imprecation. Then all found peace in a heap of livid dust.

Related Characters: Prince Don Fabrizio Corbèra , Concetta Salina, Bendicò
Related Symbols: Leopards
Page Number: 279
Explanation and Analysis:
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Concetta Salina Quotes in The Leopard

The The Leopard quotes below are all either spoken by Concetta Salina or refer to Concetta Salina. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Cultural Survival and Decline Theme Icon
).
Chapter 2. Donnafugata Quotes

The soul of the Prince reached out toward them, toward the intangible, the unattainable, which gave joy without laying claim to anything in return; as many other times, he tried to imagine himself in those icy tracts, a pure intellect armed with a notebook for calculations: difficult calculations, but ones which would always work out. “They’re the only really genuine, the only really decent beings,” thought he, in his worldly formulae. “Who worries about dowries for the Pleiades, a political career for Sirius, matrimonial joy for Vega?”

Related Characters: Prince Don Fabrizio Corbèra (speaker), Tancredi Falconeri, Concetta Salina
Related Symbols: Stars
Page Number: 83
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8. Relics Quotes

To her the removal of those objects was a matter of indifference; what did touch her, the day’s real thorn, was the appalling figure the Salina family would now cut with the ecclesiastical authorities, and soon with the entire city. […] And the Church’s esteem meant much to her. The prestige of her name had slowly disappeared; the family fortune, divided and subdivided, was at best equivalent to that of any number of other lesser families and very much smaller than that of some rich industrialists. But in the Church, in their relations with it, the Salinas had maintained their pre-eminence. What a reception His Eminence had given the three sisters when they went to make their Christmas visit! Would that happen now?

Related Characters: Father Pirrone, Concetta Salina
Page Number: 267
Explanation and Analysis:

Until today, on the rare occasions when she thought over what had happened at Donnafugata that distant summer, she had felt upheld by a sense of being martyred, being wronged, of resentment against a father who had neglected her, of torturing emotion for that other dead man. Now, however, these secondhand feelings which had formed the skeleton of her whole mode of thought were also collapsing. There had been no enemies, just one single adversary, herself; her future had been killed by her own imprudence, by the rash Salina pride[.]

Related Characters: Prince Don Fabrizio Corbèra , Tancredi Falconeri, Concetta Salina, Angelica Sedàra, Senator Tassoni
Page Number: 273
Explanation and Analysis:

As the carcass was dragged off, the glass eyes stared at her with the humble reproach of things that are thrown away, that are being annulled. A few minutes later what remained of Bendicò was flung into a corner of the courtyard visited every day by the dustman. During the flight down from the window his form recomposed itself for an instant; in the air one could have seen dancing a quadruped with long whiskers, and its right foreleg seemed to be raised in imprecation. Then all found peace in a heap of livid dust.

Related Characters: Prince Don Fabrizio Corbèra , Concetta Salina, Bendicò
Related Symbols: Leopards
Page Number: 279
Explanation and Analysis: