Portuguese Quotes

• I'm lucky because I have so many clashing cultural, racial things going on: black, Jewish, Irish, Portuguese, Cherokee. I can float and be part of any community I want.

  Rashida Jones

  Community, Black, Lucky

  52 Copy quote

• The sea with an end can be Greek or Roman: the endless sea is Portuguese.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Sea, Greek, Ends

  8 Copy quote

• During the Peninsula War, I heard a Portuguese general address his troops before a battle with the words, "Remember men, you are Portuguese!"

  Duke of Wellington

  War, Men, Battle

  "A Positively Final Appearance: A Journal 1996-98". Book by Alec Guinness, 1999.

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• We're very aggressive speakers. I remember when I was with one of my roommates in New York - and she's Portuguese, too - and we were in an Apple store talking about a computer in Portuguese. Some guy comes up to us and goes, "Hey, hey! Peace, peace! Stop arguing." It's not arguing. This is really just how we talk.

  Daniela Ruah

  Guy, Arguing, Remember

  Source: www.esquire.com

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• The blacks, those magnificent examples of the African race who have conserved their racial purity by a lack of affinity with washing, have seen their patch invaded by a different kind of slave: The Portuguese. the black is indolent and fanciful, he spends his money on frivolity and drink; the European comes from a tradition of working and saving which follows him to this corner of America and drives him to get ahead.

  Che Guevara

  Race, America, Black

  29 Copy quote

• I keep boxes filled with recuerdos - little memories that are in the form of pictures and events that I've written down. It's funny that I chose to write them in Spanish rather than English or Portuguese.

  Sonia Braga

  Memories, Writing, Events

  Source: www.rogerebert.com

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• God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Inspirational, Motivational, Christmas

  Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (2012). “Browning: Poems”, p.189, Everyman's Library

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• My parents are European immigrants. And I think as Europeans there are so many languages in close proximity that it's part of the culture to try to learn at least one other language. So my parents really encourage it in the house. Chinese would be really great to learn - like Mandarin or Cantonese. Portuguese would be incredible.

  Stana Katic

  Thinking, House, Parent

  39 Copy quote

• When I think of Peter Wolf I always remember the Portuguese proverb: 'Never say you will not drink from that glass again.'

  Faye Dunaway

  Thinking, Glasses, Remember

  "Looking for Gatsby". Book by Faye Dunaway, 1995.

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• When you hear Portuguese, if you're listening fleetingly, it's as if you're hearing Russian, which never happens with Spanish. Because the Portuguese and the Russians share the open vowels and the dark "L," the "owL" sound.

  Gregory Rabassa

  Dark, Owl, Listening

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I'm lucky because I have so many clashing cultural, racial things going on: black, Jewish, Irish, Portuguese, Cherokee. I can float and be part of any community I want. The thing is, I do identify with being black, and if people don't identify me that way that's their issue. I’m happy to challenge people's understanding of what it looks like to be biracial, because guess what? In the next 50 years, people will start looking more and more like me.

  Rashida Jones

  Years, Issues, People

  31 Copy quote

• Congratulations. You have met your conscience. In my experience, the world is divided between those who have one and those who don't. And the ones with one are divided into those who will act on their conscience and those who won't. Those who will are, I'm afraid, the smallest category. They will *jeito*. It's Brazilian Portuguese. It means to find a way to get something done, no matter what the obstacles.

  Jean Ferris

  Congratulations, Mean, Done

  7 Copy quote

• Nobody appropriates novelties as readily as the Portuguese.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Novelty

  Source: theuntranslated.wordpress.com

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• I don't write in Portuguese. I write myself.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Writing, Language

  "The Book of Disquiet". Book by Fernando Pessoa (1982). Translated by Richard Zenith, p. 353, 2006.

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• There is a degree of wretchedness and want among the lower class of people which is not anywhere so common as among the Spanish and Portuguese settlements.

  William Bligh

  Class, People, Degrees

  William Bligh (2012). “Mutiny on the Bounty”, p.28, Courier Corporation

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• Over the years I've learnt to live with two persons in my heart. One is Edson, who has fun with his friends and family; the other is the football player Pele. I didn't want the name. 'Pele' sounds like baby-talk in Portuguese.

  Pele

  Football, Baby, Fun

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• It is like sitting in a traffic jam on the San Diego Freeway with your windows rolled up and Portuguese music booming out of the surround-sound speakers while animals gnaw on your neck and diseased bill collectors hammer on your doors with golf clubs.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Golf, Animal, Surround Sound

  Hunter S. Thompson (2012). “Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness”, p.101, Pan Macmillan

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• My inspiration was my mom. She's a great cook, and she still cooks, and we still banter back and forth about cooking. Growing up in a mostly Portuguese community, food was important and the family table was extremely important. At a very young age I understood that.

  Emeril Lagasse

  Birthday, Mom, Growing Up

  "Interview With a True Original, Emeril Lagasse". Interview with Regina Varolli, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 17, 2011.

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• I grew up in Fall River, Massachusetts. My background was modest, and I worked at a Portuguese bakery in town.

  Emeril Lagasse

  Fall, Rivers, Massachusetts

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• My food is Louisiana, New Orleans-based, well-seasoned, rustic. I think it's pretty unique because of my background being influenced by my mom, Portuguese and French Canadian. There's a lot going on there.

  Emeril Lagasse

  Mom, Unique, Thinking

  7 Copy quote

• I am fluent in Spanish and I understand French, Italian and Portuguese.

  Zoe Saldana

  Italian, Fluent

  5 Copy quote

• No man born of woman has ever understood spoken Portuguese.

  Patrick O'Brian

  Men, Born, Understood

  Patrick O'Brian (2000). “Blue at the Mizzen (Vol. Book 20) (Aubrey/Maturin Novels)”, p.53, W. W. Norton & Company

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• 'De nada,' replied Gregorius. The Portuguese couple sat down, the train went on. Gregorius was never to forget this scene. They were his first Portuguese words in the real world and they worked. That words could cause something in the world, make someone move or stop, laugh or cry: even as a child he had found it extraordinary and it had never stopped impressing him.

  Pascal Mercier

  Morning, Children, Real

  "Night Train To Lisbon".

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• As paredes tem ouvidos. (Portuguese: The walls have ears.)

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Wall, Walls Have Ears, Ears

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• I'm a Catholic by background. I was raised in Goa, a part of India that was visited by Portuguese missionaries a few hundred years ago, which explains my last name.

  Dinesh D'Souza

  Years, Names, Catholic

  Interview with Heidi Benson, www.sfgate.com. November 30, 2008.

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