Quotes by Spanish Authors - Page 5

The painting rises from the brushstrokes as a poem rises from the words. The meaning comes later.
Joan Miró
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
Pablo Picasso
Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
Pablo Picasso
An artist may visit a museum but only a pedant can live there.
George Santayana
Art is a delayed echo.
George Santayana
If artists and poets are unhappy it is after all because happiness does not interest them.
George Santayana
Two boys arrived yesterday with a pebble they said was the head of a dog until I pointed out that it was really a typewriter.
Pablo Picasso
There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence transform a yellow spot into sun.
Pablo Picasso
All that glisters is not gold.
Miguel de Cervantes
Boston is a moral and intellectual nursery always busy applying first principles to trifles.
George Santayana
Never have I enjoyed youth so thoroughly as I have in my old age. In writing Dialogues in Limbo The Last Puritan and now all these descriptions of the friends of my youth and the young friends of my middle age I have drunk the pleasure of life more pure more joyful than it ever was when mingled with all the hidden anxieties and little annoyances of actual living. Nothing is inherently and invincibly young except spirit. And spirit can enter a human being perhaps better in the quiet of old age and dwell there more undisturbed than in the turmoil of adventure.
George Santayana
Before you contradict an old man my fair friend you should endeavour to understand him.
George Santayana
You must not think sir to catch old birds with chaff.
Cervantes
Wisdom comes by disillusionment.
George Santayana
One who was adored by all in prosperity is abhorred by all in adversity.
Baltasar Gracián
The difficulties which I meet with in order to realize my existence are precisely what awaken and mobilize my activities my capacities.
José Ortega y Gasset
Do not show your wounded finger for everything will knock up against it.
Baltasar Gracián
Let us work as if success depended upon ourselves alone but with heartfelt conviction that we are doing nothing and God everything.
Saint Ignatius of Loyola
It is a great piece of skill to know how to guide your luck even while waiting for it.
Baltasar Gracián
To knock a thing down especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle is a deep delight to the blood.
George Santayana
The most difficult character in comedy is that of the fool and he must be no simpleton that plays that part.
Miguel de Cervantes
Science says: "We must live " and seeks the means of prolonging increasing facilitating and amplifying life of making it tolerable and acceptable wisdom says: "We must die " and seeks how to make us die well.
Miguel de Unamuno
If you are wise live as you can if you cannot live as you would.
Baltasar Gracián
Man adapts himself to everything to the best and the worst.
José Ortega y Gasset
There is no cure for birth or death save to enjoy the interval.
George Santayana
Don Ricardo wanted a successor worthy of himself. Jorge would always be cocooned in the privileges of his class, hiding from his mediocrity in creature comforts. Penelope, the beautiful Penelope, was a woman, and therefore a treasure, not a treasurer. Julian, who had the soul of a poet, and therefore the soul of a murderer, fulfilled all the requirements. It was only a question of time.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
I was born with nothing and I still have nothing. And tomorrow is nothing.
Chimo
The first conversation began awkwardly, although Espinoza had been expecting Pelletier's call, as if both men found it difficult to say what sooner or later the would have to say. The first twenty minutes were tragic in tone, with the word fate used ten times and the word friendship twenty-four times. Liz Norton's name was spoken fifty times, nine of them in vain. The word Paris was said seven times, Madrid, eight. The word love was spoken twice, once by each man. The word horror was spoken six times and the word happiness once (by Espinoza). The word solution was said twelve times. The word solipsism seven times. The world euphemism ten times. The word category, in the singular and the plural, nine times. The word structuralism once (Pelletier). The term American literature three times. The words dinner or eating or breakfast or sandwich nineteen times. The words eyes or hands or hair fourteen times. The the conversation proceeded more smoothly.
Roberto Bolaño
Why do you think politicians send soldiers to the wars they declare, if, of course, they still go to the bother of declaring them. . . . mediation, keeping a distance from the actual events and being privileged enough not to have to witness them.
Javier Marías
- Boys my age are boring. They have nothing to say and half of them seem like complete idiots.I was going to say that they didn't improve with age but didn't want to spoil her illusions.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
He let the hours go by lost in the magic of words, shedding his skin and his name, feeling like another person. He allowed himself to be carried away by the dreams of shadowy characters, the only refuge left for him.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Books make me happy, the help me escape from reality.
Félix J. Palma
Unhappy people often insist on trying to uncover the full magnitude of their unhappiness, or choose to investigate other people's lives as a distraction from their own.
Javier Marías
Friends are generally of the same sex, for when men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions, their reasons are always different.
George Santayana
[She] had the indefinable charm of someone who said little but thought much. Miss Prim had always felt that such people were at a marked advantage. They never said anything tactless, never spouted nonsense, never had cause to regret their words or justify themselves.
Natalia Sanmartín Fenollera
Reading was artificial borrowed life, benefiting from ideas and sensations transmitted cerebrally, acquiring the treasures of human truth by purchase or swindle, not by work.
Benito Pérez Galdós
...there are so many books left to read. For that reason alone it is worth going on living. Books make me happy, the help me escape from reality.
Félix J. Palma
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
The owner of the Agut d'Avignon had the air of a 1920s dandy who had ruined himself with one mad night of gambling at baccarat and had only been saved by this restaurant, which he seemed to cherish as if it were his wife or a good fountain pen.
Manuel Vázquez Montalbán
Rivalry discovers that courtesy overlooks.
Baltasar Gracián
Everyone wanted to see [him] fall so they could devour his remains. As is usually the case, the army of sycophants had turned into a horde of hungry hyenas
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Envy is the religion of the mediocre. It comforts them, it soothes their worries, and finally it rots their souls, allowing them to justify their meanness and their greed until they believe these to be virtues. Such people are convinced that the doors of heaven will be opened only to poor wretches like themselves who go through life without leaving any trace but their threadbare attempts to belittle others and to exclude - and destroy if possible - those who, by the simple fact of their existence, show up their own poorness of spirit, mind, and guts. Blessed be the one at whom the fools bark, because his soul will never belong to them.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
A problem is a solution yet to be discovered
Marc Torra
When the Rabbis stated that obedience or disobedience to the commandments depends not on the will of Hashem but on man’s free will, they echoed Jeremiah, who said, “Out of the mouth of the Most High there comes neither the bad nor the good” (Lamentations 3:38). By the bad he meant vice, and by the good he intended virtue, meaning that Hashem does not predetermine any person as bad or good. Since this is so, a person owes it to himself to mourn his sins and transgressions, since he has committed them of his own free will, as Jeremiah says, “For what should a living man mourn? Let every man mourn because of his sins” (Lamentations 3:39). Jeremiah answers his question positively, telling us that the remedy for our disease lies with us. Just as our failings stemmed from our own free will, so do we have the power to repent of our evil deeds.
Maimonides
I believe that nothing happens by chance. Deep down, things have their secret plan, even though we don't understand it.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
No one knew what she was doing in Colonia Hidalgo, although it was most likely, according to the police, that she'd been taking a walk and had come upon death purely by chance.
Roberto Bolaño
O how gently and how lovingly dost thou lie awake in the depth and centre of my soul, where thou in secret and in silence alone, as its sole Lord, abidest, not only as in Thine own house or in Thine own chamber, but also as within my own bosom, in close and intimate union.
San Juan de la Cruz
Madmen, criminals, and rapists! Isn’t it fantastic? All the romantic proposals I’ve ever got from anybody. Somebody up there has an extremely dark sense of humour.
Olga Núñez Miret
Matthews asked:“How intimate was your relationship with Dr. Miller?”“Intimate?” Phil still couldn’t grasp what they were asking.“My colleague is asking if you’d ever had sex with Dr. Miller before that evening.” Jones added curtly. “I’ve never…We’ve never…We’re friends. We’d never had sex before that evening, and we didn’t have sex that evening either.”“How do you explain your semen in her sheets then, Mr. Marshall?
Olga Núñez Miret
Sometimes, watching a movie is a bit like being raped.
Luis Buñuel
What is important is to spread confusion, not eliminate it.
Salvador Dalí
He believed that life gives us all a few moments of happiness. For some they last hours or days, for a few lucky ones they last for years. The memories from those moments stays with us forever and turns into a country of memory to which we try to go back for the rest of our lives without ever being able to
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Winning isn't about finishing in first place. It isn't about beating the others. It is about overcoming yourself. Overcoming your body, your limitations, and your fears. Winning means surpassing yourself and turning your dreams into reality.
Kilian Jornet
Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once.
Manel Loureiro
My balls shrank in terror. I was convinced we were going to die.
Manel Loureiro
History is biology's dumping ground
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
You don't win a game by hitting the ball out of the court.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
They must take me for a fool, or even worse, a lunatic. And no wonder ,for I am so intensely conscious of my misfortune and my misery is so overwhelming that I am powerless to resist it and am being turned into stone, devoid of all knowledge or feeling.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
What seems to me white, I will believe black if the hierarchical Church so defines.
Ignatius of Loyola
I believe in the understanding of difficult situations, difficult music, or any kind of difficulties, through familiarity. Familiarity, in this case, does not breed contempt, but breeds understanding.
Daniel Barenboim