The Leopard

by

Giuseppe Di Lampedusa

Father Pirrone is a Jesuit priest, the Salina family chaplain, and the Prince’s friend. He disapproves of the new liberal politics that are becoming popular in Sicily—especially because he believes that the Italian State will seize the Catholic Church’s properties, thus disrupting the Church’s traditional role as benefactor to Sicily’s poor. Father Pirrone is portrayed as unfailingly faithful to the Salinas, as well as a sincere and devout Catholic. He is often concerned about the Prince’s spiritual welfare but still overlooks some of the Prince’s sexual misbehavior, especially when distracted by their shared hobby of astronomy. Father Pirrone also disapproves of Tancredi’s marriage, aware of Tancredi’s history of sexual indiscretions—but he doesn’t interfere in the arrangement. Father Pirrone comes from a humble peasant village, and his outsider perspective gives him unique insight into the character of the noble class. He believes that no matter what happens politically, the nobility will always renew itself in different forms, because nobility has more to do with attitude than blood. Father Pirrone also negotiates a peaceful outcome within his family after his niece is impregnated by a cousin. This event leads him to observe that both peasant and nobility are susceptible to the same kinds of misdeeds—they just manifest differently.

Father Pirrone Quotes in The Leopard

The The Leopard quotes below are all either spoken by Father Pirrone or refer to Father Pirrone. 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 5. Father Pirrone Pays a Visit Quotes

“It’s a class difficult to suppress because it’s in continual renewal and because if needs be it can die well, that is it can throw out a seed at the moment of death. […] I say as before, because it’s differences of attitude, not estates and feudal rights, which make a noble […] And I can tell you too, Don Pietrino, that if, as has often happened before, this class were to vanish, an equivalent one would be formed straightaway with the same qualities and the same defects; it might not be based on blood any more, but possibly on . . . on, say, the length of time lived in a place, or on greater knowledge of some text

Related Characters: Father Pirrone (speaker), Tancredi Falconeri, Angelica Sedàra, Don Pietrino
Page Number: 199
Explanation and Analysis:

Two days later Father Pirrone left to return to Palermo. As he was jolted along he went over impressions that were not entirely pleasant; that brutish love affair come to fruition in St. Martin’s summer, that wretched half almond grove reacquired by means of calculated courtship, seemed to him the rustic poverty-stricken equivalent of other events recently witnessed. Nobles were reserved and incomprehensible, peasants explicit and clear; but the Devil twisted them both around his little finger all the same.

Related Characters: Prince Don Fabrizio Corbèra , Tancredi Falconeri, Father Pirrone, Don Calogero Sedàra , Angelica Sedàra, ‘Ncilina, Santino Pirrone, Turi Pirrone
Page Number: 209
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:
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Father Pirrone Quotes in The Leopard

The The Leopard quotes below are all either spoken by Father Pirrone or refer to Father Pirrone. 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 5. Father Pirrone Pays a Visit Quotes

“It’s a class difficult to suppress because it’s in continual renewal and because if needs be it can die well, that is it can throw out a seed at the moment of death. […] I say as before, because it’s differences of attitude, not estates and feudal rights, which make a noble […] And I can tell you too, Don Pietrino, that if, as has often happened before, this class were to vanish, an equivalent one would be formed straightaway with the same qualities and the same defects; it might not be based on blood any more, but possibly on . . . on, say, the length of time lived in a place, or on greater knowledge of some text

Related Characters: Father Pirrone (speaker), Tancredi Falconeri, Angelica Sedàra, Don Pietrino
Page Number: 199
Explanation and Analysis:

Two days later Father Pirrone left to return to Palermo. As he was jolted along he went over impressions that were not entirely pleasant; that brutish love affair come to fruition in St. Martin’s summer, that wretched half almond grove reacquired by means of calculated courtship, seemed to him the rustic poverty-stricken equivalent of other events recently witnessed. Nobles were reserved and incomprehensible, peasants explicit and clear; but the Devil twisted them both around his little finger all the same.

Related Characters: Prince Don Fabrizio Corbèra , Tancredi Falconeri, Father Pirrone, Don Calogero Sedàra , Angelica Sedàra, ‘Ncilina, Santino Pirrone, Turi Pirrone
Page Number: 209
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: