Quotes by Spanish Authors - Page 2

I also remember being struck by de Sade's will, in which he asked that his ashes be scattered to the four corners of the earth in the hope that humankind would forget both his writings and his name. I'd like to be able to make that demand; commemorative ceremonies are not only false but dangerous, as are all statues of famous men. Long live forgetfulness, I've always said—the only dignity I see is in oblivion.
Luis Buñuel
Eight: the age of exploration, of ghosts and secret forays; the age at which a mystery lurks behind every curtain and every armoire opens into a magical world, which you may enter at any time, but who knows when you will return.
Carmen Posadas
Teach us to give and not to count the cost.
Ignatius Loyola
We do tend to believe things while we're hearing or reading them. Afterwards, it's another matter, when the book is closed and the voice stops speaking.
Javier Marías
Smart people have the brains, but stupid people have the balls
Ana Sáez González
I don't know if cats understand what their owners say, but they do have a strong survival instinct.
Manel Loureiro
A light which lives on what the flames devour,a grey landscape surrounding me with scorch,a crucifixion by a single wound,a sky and earth that darken by each hour,a sob of blood whose red ribbon adornsa lyre without a pulse, and oils the torch,a tide which stuns and strands me on the reef,a scorpion scrambling, stinging in my chest--this is the wreath of love, this bed of thornsis where I dream of you stealing my rest,haunting these sunken ribs cargoed with grief.I sought the peak of prudence, but I foundthe hemlock-brimming valley of your heart,and my own thirst for bitter truth an
Federico García Lorca
Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.
Pablo Picasso
Then he went out without touching anything and put his arm around Ingeborg, and like that, with their arms around each other, they returned to the village while the whole past of the universe fell on their heads.
Roberto Bolaño
The great art of giving consists in this the gift should cost very little and yet be greatly coveted, so that it may be the more highly appreciated.
Baltasar Gracián
It requires as much caution to tell the truth as to conceal it.
Baltasar Gracián
Faith which does not doubt is dead faith.
Miguel de Unamuno
One loves truly only once in a lifetime, Julian, even if one isn’t aware of it.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Teaching the layperson (divulgare) is not distorting (tergiversare) the subject, but educating the public; and it is our duty as scientists to educate without distorting the essence of the scientific knowledge attained by humanity. The future of our society depends upon this premise.
Felix Alba-Juez
Nothing you can lose by dying is half so precious as the readiness to die which is man's charter of nobility.
George Santayana
Destiny is usually around the corner. Like a thief, like a hooker, or a lottery vendor: its three most common personifications. But what destiny does not do is home visits. You have to go for it
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Does this mean that in some places I'm American and in some places I'm African American and in other places, by logical extension, I'm nobody?
Roberto Bolaño
To knock a thing down especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle is a deep delight to the blood.
George Santayana
[A]nd the wizened youth trembles more and more violently, wrinkles his nose and then pounces on the story. But only I know the story, the real story. And it is simple and cruel and true and it should make us laugh, it should make us die laughing. But we only know how to cry, the only thing we do wholeheartedly is cry.
Roberto Bolaño
Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart..
Pablo Casals
...in the worst of circumstances, the hypocrite who pretends to be good does less harm than the public sinner.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
The writer’s job is to write with rigor, with commitment, to defend what they believe with all the talent they have. I think that’s part of the moral obligation of a writer, which cannot be only purely artistic. I think a writer has some kind of responsibility at least to participate in the civic debate. I think literature is impoverished, if it becomes cut from the main agenda of people, of society, of life.
Mario Vargas Llosa
Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
I think of the memory as being rather like a dam," he said, after a pause for thought. "It irrigates and gives life to our whole spirit. But, like a dam, it needs overflow channels if it's not to burst its banks. Because if it ever does overflow or burst, its waters will destroy everything in its path.
Bernardo Atxaga
For me, then, nobility is synonymous with a life of effort, ever set on excelling oneself, in passing beyond what one is to what one sets up as a duty and an obligation. In this way the noble life stands opposed to the common or inert life, which reclines statically upon itself, condemned to perpetual immobility, unless an external force compels it to come out of itself. Hence we apply the term mass to this kind of man- not so much because of his multitude as because of his inertia.
Ortega y Gasset
Man has to live with the body and soul which have fallen to him by chance.
José Ortega y Gasset
Heroes and scholars represent the opposite extremes... The scholar struggles for the benefit of all humanity, sometimes to reduce physical effort, sometimes to reduce pain, and sometimes to postpone death, or at least render it more bearable. In contrast, the patriot sacrifices a rather substantial part of humanity for the sake of his own prestige. His statue is always erected on a pedestal of ruins and corpses... In contrast, all humanity crowns a scholar, love forms the pedestal of his statues, and his triumphs defy the desecration of time and the judgment of history.
Santiago Ramón y Cajal
He had a face like a benediction.
Miguel de Cervantes
All names disappear. Children should be taught that in elementary school. But we're afraid to teach them.
Roberto Bolaño
Do you like reading? It's the best thing that can happen to you in life. Writing has other implications.
Manuel Rivas
For a while, Criticism travels side by side with the Work, then Criticism vanishes and it's the Readers who keep pace. The journey may be long or short.
Roberto Bolaño
Wanderer, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more; wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking. By walking one makes the road, and upon glancing behind one sees the path that never will be trod again. Wanderer, there is no road-- Only wakes upon the sea.Caminante, son tus huellas el camino, y nada más; caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar. Al andar se hace camino, y al volver la vista atrás se ve la senda que nunca se ha de volver a pisar. Caminante, no hay camino, sino estelas en la mar.
Antonio Machado
Superiority is always detested.
Baltasar Gracián
If it is nothingness that awaits us, let us make an injustice of it, let us fight against destiny, even without hope of victory.
Miguel de Unamuno
Instead of speaking of justice and injustice, freedom and oppression, classless society and class society, they talked in terms of God and the Devil.
Mario Vargas Llosa
When people read his books they have an uncontrollable desire to hang the author in the town square. I can’t think of a higher honor for a writer.
Roberto Bolaño
As long as our brain is a mystery, the universe, the reflection of the structure of the brain will also be a mystery.
Santiago Ramón y Cajal
To mock something is pure ignorance. Intelligent people even open themselves to things that they don't understand. […] When an ignorant praises something, it won't probably be something profound. Surely it can't be the Principle that guides us.
Alfonso Colodrón
What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who only has eyes, if he is a painter, or ears if he is a musician, or a lyre in every chamber of his heart if he is a poet, or even, if he is a boxer, just his muscles? Far from it: at the same time he is also a political being, constantly aware of the heartbreaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. How could it be possible to feel no interest in other people, and with a cool indifference to detach yourself from the very life which they bring to you so abundantly? No, painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.
Pablo Picasso
My mother said to me "If you become a soldier you'll be a general if you become a monk you'll end up as the pope." Instead I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.
Pablo Picasso
If artists and poets are unhappy it is after all because happiness does not interest them.
George Santayana
I was brought up Christian, then I was agnostic and then I realized I was atheist... This movie [Agora] is about fundamentalism and hate.
Alejandro Amenábar
The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.
Pablo Picasso
If you don't trust a novelist, who are you going to trust?
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
My knowledge of myself is direct, synthetic, from within outwards; my knowledge of other persons is indirect, analytical, from outside inwards. My knowledge of myself starts at the core; that of others at the crust.
Salvador de Madariaga
Reading is more important than writing.
Roberto Bolaño
When one has nothing to lose, one becomes courageous. We are timid only when there is something we can still cling to.
Don Juan
Books hold no passports. There's only one true literary tradition: the human.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
In a moving world readaptation is the price of longevity.
George Santayana
Serena has spent her life fighting fiction the way good soldiers fight—intent on detecting its presence, harassing it, suppressing it—but I have to find a way to show her she’s mistaken her enemy, to explain to her that whoever suppresses fiction destroys life, and that everything disappears with it, all love, all desire. If the past is an invention, it’s not such a big deal. After all, the future’s an invention, and no one finds that hard to accept.
Enrique de Hériz
A stout heart breaks bad luck.
Miguel de Cervantes
...I have to admit that I've ... always felt burdened by nostalgia, by a desire to stop time, to recapture things that have been lost. A sense that everything, absolutely everything, is on a journey from which there's no return.
Natalia Sanmartín Fenollera
An intellectual is usually someone who isn't exactly distinguished by his intellect," Corelli asserted. "he claims that label to compensate for his inadequacies. It's as old as that saying : "Tell me what you boast of and I'll tell you what you lack. Our daily bread. The incompetent always present themselves as experts, the cruel as pious, sinners as devout, usurers as benefactors, the small-minded as patriots, the arrogant as humble, the vulgar as elegant, and the feeble-minded as intellectual. Once again, it's all the work of nature. Far from being the sylph to whom poets sing, nature is a cruel, voracious mother who needs to feed on the creatures she gives birth to in order to stay alive.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
[P]art of the pleasure of engaging with a writer is unraveling some allusions and admitting defeat by others.
Felipe Fernández-Armesto
Do not show your wounded finger for everything will knock up against it.
Baltasar Gracián
The fact is that nothing is more difficult to believe than the truth; conversely, nothing seduces like the power of lies, the greater the better. It's only natural, and you will have to find the right balance. Having said that, let me add that this particular old woman hasn't been collecting only years; she has also collected stories, and none sadder or more terrible than the one she's about to tell you. You have been at the heart of this story without knowing it until today ...
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
There is no problem more difficult to solve than that created by ourselves.
Felix Alba-Juez
I've learnt that solitude is sometimes a path that leads to peace
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
It is the case that, albeit to a lesser extent, all fictions make their readers live "the impossible", taking them out of themselves, breaking down barriers, and making them share, by identifying with the characters of the illusion, a life that is richer, more intense, or more abject and violent, or simply different from the one that they are confined to by the high-security prison that is real life. Fictions exist because of this fact. Because we have only one life, and our desires and fantasies demand a thousand lives. Because the abyss between what we are and what we would like to be has to be bridged somehow. That was why fictions were born: so that, through living this vicarious, transient, precarious, but also passionate and fascinating life that fiction transports us to, we can incorporate the impossible into the possible and our existence can be both reality and unreality, history and fable, concrete life and marvellous adventure.
Mario Vargas Llosa
One of the best ways to attract capital is to outperform the competition.
Alejandro Cremades