Jose Saramago Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• Nothing so tires a person as having to struggle, not with himself, but with an abstraction.

  Jose Saramago

  Struggle, Tire, Persons

  "All the Names" by Jose Saramago, tr. Margaret Jull Costam London: The Harvill Press, (p. 14), 1999.

  13 Copy quote

• One cannot be too careful with words, they change their minds just as people do.

  Jose Saramago

  People, Mind, Careful

  13 Copy quote

• We know that happiness is short-lived, that we fail to cherish it when it is within our grasp and value it only when it has vanished forever.

  Jose Saramago

  Happiness, Forever, Failing

  6 Copy quote

• The problem is that the right doesn't need any ideas to govern, but the left can't govern without ideas.

  Jose Saramago

  Ideas, Needs, Problem

  "Still a street-fighting man". Interview with Stephanie Merritt, www.theguardian.com. April 30, 2006.

  9 Copy quote

• Death is the inventor of God.

  Jose Saramago

  Inventor

  "'La muerte es la inventora de Dios'". Interview with Francesc Relea, elpais.com. October 17, 2009.

  5 Copy quote

• In a king, modesty would be a sign of weakness.

  Jose Saramago

  Kings, Weakness, Would Be

  6 Copy quote

• As so often happens, the thing left undone tires you most of all, you only feel rested when it has been accomplished.

  Jose Saramago

  Tire, Undone, Accomplished

  4 Copy quote

• Human nature is, by definition, a talkative one, imprudent, indiscreet, gossipy, incapable of closing its mouth and keeping it closed.

  Jose Saramago

  Definitions, Mouths, Human Nature

  "The Cave". Book by Jose Saramago, 2002.

  17 Copy quote

• The church has never been asked to explain anything, our speciality, along with ballistics, has always been the neutralisation of the overly curious mind through faith.

  Jose Saramago

  Faith, Mind, Church

  7 Copy quote

• Don't be afraid, the darkness you're in is no greater than the darkness inside your own body, they are two darknesses separated by a skin, I bet you've never thought of that, you carry a darkness about with you all the time and that doesn't frighten you...my dear chap, you have to learn to live with the darkness outside just as you learned to live with the darkness inside

  Jose Saramago

  Two, Darkness, Skins

  4 Copy quote

• Words have their own hierarchy, their own protocol, their own artistic titles, their own plebeian stigmas.

  Jose Saramago

  Hierarchy, Titles, Artistic

  13 Copy quote

• Often when you ask for one thing you receive another, this is the mysterious thing about prayer, we address them to heaven with some private intention, but they choose their own path, sometimes they delay, allowing other prayers to overtake them, frequently they overlap and become hybrid prayers of dubious origin, which quarrel and argue among themselves.

  Jose Saramago

  Prayer, Mysterious Things, Heaven

  7 Copy quote

• all stories are like those about the creation of the universe, no one was there, no one witnessed anything, yet everyone knows what happened.

  Jose Saramago

  Stories, Creation Of The Universe, Happened

  7 Copy quote

• Every novel is like this, desperation, a frustrated attempt to save something of the past. Except that it still has not been established whether it is the novel that prevents man from forgetting himself or the impossibility of forgetfulness that makes him write novels.

  Jose Saramago

  Writing, Past, Men

  "The History of the Siege of Lisbon" by Jose Saramago, (p. 47), 1989.

  6 Copy quote

• I'm not pessimistic. It is the world that is terrible. How can we be optimistic in the face of a planet where people live so badly, nature is being destroyed and the dominant empire is money?

  Jose Saramago

  Optimistic, People, Empires

  "Desventuras em serie". Interview with Luis Antonio Giron in Sao Paulo for Epoca Magazine (in Portuguese), translated, 2005.

  5 Copy quote

• It is difficult to understand these people who democratically take part in elections and a referendum, but are then incapable of democratically accepting the will of the people.

  Jose Saramago

  People, Election, Accepting

  20 Copy quote

• Death is present every day in our lives. It's not that I take pleasure in the morbid fascination of it, but it is a fact of life.

  Jose Saramago

  Fascination, Facts, Morbid

  8 Copy quote

• The history of mankind is the history of our misunderstandings with god, for he doesn't understand us, and we don't understand him.

  Jose Saramago

  Mankind, Misunderstanding

  "Cain". Book by José Saramago, translated by Margaret Jull Costa, www.newyorker.com. 2009.

  5 Copy quote

• I write to try to understand, and because I have nothing better to do.

  Jose Saramago

  Writing, Trying

  "Saramago diz que escreve por não ter 'nada melhor para fazer'". www1.folha.uol.com.br. April 2, 2007.

  4 Copy quote

• Not only does the universe have its own laws, all of them indifferent to the contradictory dreams and desires of humanity, and in the formulation of which we contribute not one iota, apart, that is, from the words by which we clumsily name them, but everything seems to indicate that it uses these laws for aims and objectives that transcend and always will transcend our understanding.

  Jose Saramago

  Dream, Law, Names

  7 Copy quote

• Will we ever learn that certain things can be understood only if we take the trouble to trace them to their origins.

  Jose Saramago

  Trouble, Certain, Understood

  4 Copy quote

• The minds of human beings are not always entirely at one with the world in which they live, some people have trouble adjusting to reality, basically they're just weak, confused spirits who use words, sometimes very skillfully, to justify their cowardice.

  Jose Saramago

  Confused, Reality, People

  14 Copy quote

• Sleep is a skilled magician, it changes the proportions of things, the distances between them, it separates people and they're lying next to each other, brings them together and they can barely see one another.

  Jose Saramago

  Distance, Lying, Sleep

  8 Copy quote

• I never appreciated 'positive heroes' in literature. They are almost always cliches, copies of copies, until the model is exhausted. I prefer perplexity, doubt, uncertainty, not just because it provides a more 'productive' literary raw material, but because that is the way we humans really are.

  Jose Saramago

  Positive, Hero, Writing

  "Interview with Jose Saramago, Author of Blindness". Political Affairs Magazine Interview, www.politicalaffairs.net. March 2006.

  7 Copy quote

• blindness is a private matter between a person and the eyes with which he or she was born.

  Jose Saramago

  Eye, Matter, Born

  5 Copy quote

Page 4 of 9

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin