Quotes by Spanish Authors

Do you know what the worst thing about literature is? said Don Pancracio. I knew, but I pretended I didn't. What? I said. That you end up being friends with writers. And friendship, treasure though it may be, destroys your critical sense.
Roberto Bolaño
Before the Apocalypse, the closest I'd gotten to death was buying steaks at the supermarket.
Manel Loureiro
For you was I born, for you do I have life, for you will I die, for you am I now dying.
Garcilaso de la Vega
An obscure flesh-and-blood Gascon, forgotten by History, transformed into a legendary giant by the novelist's genius
Arturo Pérez-Reverte
Her tiny and organized handwriting reminded me of the tidiness of her desk, as if she'd wanted to find in words the peace and safety that life hadn't wanted to grant her.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
It takes a long time to become young.
Pablo Picasso
Begin with another's to end with your own.
Baltasar Gracián
Words are feminine deeds are masculine.
Baltasar Gracián
Mum is the word.
Miguel de Cervantes
A beautiful woman should break her mirror early.
Baltasar Gracián
The wise have a solid sense of silence and the ability to keep a storehouse of secrets. Their capacity and character are respected.
Baltasar Gracián
A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.
Baltasar Gracián
Almost every wise saying has an opposite one no less wise to balance it.
George Santayana
A sage has one advantage he is immortal. If this is not his century many others will be.
Baltasar Gracián
God bears with the wicked but not forever.
Cervantes
God bears with the wicked but not forever.
Miguel de Cervantes
They will conquer but they will not convince.
Miguel de Unamuno
Good things when short are twice as good.
Baltasar Gracián
It is a great misfortune to be of use to nobody scarcely less to be of use to everybody.
Baltasar Gracián
The mean of true valor lies between the extremes of cowardice and rashness.
Miguel de Cervantes
The truth is cruel but it can be loved and it makes free those who have loved it.
George Santayana
Truth always lags last limping along on the arm of Time.
Baltasar Gracián
Before he sets out the traveller must possess fixed interests and facilities to be served by travel. If he drifted aimlessly from country to country he would not travel but only wander ramble as a tramp. The traveller must be somebody and come from somewhere so his definite character and moral traditions may supply an organ and a point of comparison for his observations.
George Santayana
Time and I against any two.
Baltasar Gracián
Nothing really belongs to us but time which even he has who has nothing else.
Baltasar Gracián
My thoughts ran a wool-gathering.
Miguel de Cervantes
Study as if you were to live forever. Live as if you were to die tomorrow.
Saint Isidore of Seville
We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic of life is its coerciveness: it is always urgent "here and now " without any possible postponement. Life is fired at us point-blank.
José Ortega y Gasset
Ne'er look for the birds of this year in the nests of the last.
Miguel de Cervantes
The past will not tell us what we ought to do but... what we ought to avoid.
José Ortega y Gasset
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana
That which enters the mind through reason can be corrected. That which is admitted through faith hardly ever.
Santiago Ramón y Cajal
A man's memory may almost become the art of continually varying and misrepresenting his past according to his interest in the present.
George Santayana
They who lose today may win tomorrow.
Miguel de Cervantes
It is good taste and good taste alone that possesses the power to sterilize and is always the first handicap to any creative functioning.
Salvador Dalí
Taste is the enemy of creativeness.
Pablo Picasso
Superiority is always detested.
Baltasar Gracián
One swallow alone does not make the summer.
Miguel de Cervantes
Make hay while the sun shines.
Miguel de Cervantes
Abasement degradation is simply the manner of life of the man who has refused to be what it is his duty to be.
José Ortega y Gasset
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
The brave man carves out his fortune and every man is the sum of his own works.
Miguel de Cervantes
Little said is soon amended. There is always time to add a word never to withdraw one.
Baltasar Gracián
All sorrows are bearable if there is bread.
Miguel de Cervantes
There are only two families in the world as a Grandmother of mine used to say the haves and the have-nots.
Miguel de Cervantes
Sleep is the best cure for waking troubles.
Miguel de Cervantes
The simplest things give me ideas.
Joan Miró
There is no cure for birth or death save to enjoy the interval.
George Santayana
The more we reduce the size of our world the more we shall be its master.
Jacinto Benavente
I can tell where my own shoe pinches me.
Miguel de Cervantes
All times are beautiful for those who maintain joy within them but there is no happy or favorable time for those with disconsolate or orphaned souls.
Rosalia Castro
If one is cruel to himself how can we expect him to be compassionate with others?
Hasdai Ibn Shaprut
Man has to live with the body and soul which have fallen to him by chance.
José Ortega y Gasset
If a man really knew himself he would utterly despise the ignorant notions others might form on a subject in which he had such matchless opportunities for observation.
George Santayana
Science is nothing but developed perception interpreted intent common sense rounded out and minutely articulated.
George Santayana
If all the arts aspire to the condition of music all the sciences aspire to the condition of mathematics.
George Santayana
Work and love - these are the basics waking life is a dream controlled.
George Santayana
Nothing arouses ambition so much as the trumpet clang of another's fame.
Baltasar Gracián
Valour lies just halfway between rashness and cowardice.
Miguel de Cervantes
It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!
Delores Ibarruri