Jose Rizal

“A lie among the starsIs a comfortable lie.”

“We must win when we deserve it, by elevating reason and the dignity of the individual, loving justice and the good and the great, even dying for it.”

“The glory of saving a country doesn't mean having to use the measures that contributed to its ruin!”

“When a people is denied light, home, freedom, justice, all the good things without which life is not possible, and which constitute man's patrimony, a person has the right to deal with the people who despoil him, like a thief who assaults us in the roadway. No qualifications, no exceptions.”

“The God they preach about is pure invention, a trick. They're the first ones to not believe in Him!”

“Would that I could die, reduce myself to nothing, leave a glorious name to my country, die in the cause of defending it against a foreign invasion and afterwards the sun will shine on my body like a permanent sentinel in these ocean rocks!”

“A revolution, woven in the dim light of mystery, has kept me from you. Another revolution will return me to your arms, bring me back to life.”

“When a people holds onto its language, it holds onto a semblance of freedom, like a man who holds onto his independence when he retains his own way of thinking. Language is the thought of a people.”

“O, in the solitude of those mountains I feel free, free as the air, like a light blasting unharnessed through space. A thousand cities, a thousand palaces I would give just for a corner of the Philippines where far away from man I could feel truly free!”

“The righteous man pays the sinner's bill.”

“Dying people don't need medicine, the ones who remain do.”

“Our young people think about nothing more than love affairs and pleasure. They spend more time attempting to seduce and dishonor young women than in thinking about their country's welfare. Our women, in order to take care of the house and family of God, forget their own. Our men limit their activities to vice and their heroics to shameful acts. Children wake up in a fog of routine, adolescents live out their best years without ideals, and their elders are sterile, and only serve to corrupt our young people by their example.”

“The gods are leaving.”

“Man understood in the end what man is. He renounces the analysis of God, penetrating the impalpable, in which he has not seen, to give laws to the phantasms of his brain. Man understands that his inheritance is the greater world whose dominion is within his grasp. Tired of useless and presumptuous labor he bows his head and looks about him, and now he sees how our poets are born. Little by little nature's muses open their treasures and start to smile upon us, and lead us far from such labors.”

“Vice pays for its own freedom.”

“People believe that madness is when you don't think as they do, which is why they take me for a madman.”

“I fear for my books.”

“In the Philippines you are not considered to be honorable unless you have been to jail.”

“I die without seeing dawn's light shining on my country... You, who will see it, welcome it for me...don't forget those who fell during the nighttime.”

“...genius knows no country, genius sprouts anywhere, genius is like light, air. the patrimony of everybody, cosmopolitan like space, like life, like God.”

“Sisa shut up the cabin and covered the few embers with ash so they wouldn’t go out, as people do with their deepest feelings: cover them with life’s ashes, which they call “indifference,” so they don’t go out completely as a result of day-to-day interaction with our peers.”

“Night favors belief, and the imagination peoples the air with specters.”

“What was exchanged in the language of their eyes, more perfect than their lips, the language afforded the soul so that no sound disturbs an ecstasy of feeling? In those moments, when the thought of the two happy beings meld through their pupils, words move slowly, coarsely, like the raspy, awkward noise of thunder from dazzling light that appears after the quickness of the flash. It expresses feelings previously known, ideas yet understood, and in the end, if one must use words, it is because the heart’s ambitions—which dominates one’s whole being and overflows with happiness—wishes with the whole human organism, with all its physical and psychical faculties, to embody the poem of joy that the spirit has intoned. Language has no answer to the questions of love that either shimmer or hide within a glance. The smile must respond; the kiss, the sigh.”

“The whys and wherefores didn’t need to be said. If you are reading this have ever loved someone, you will understand. Putting it into words is useless. The uninitiated cannot understand the mysterious.”

“She was white, perhaps too white. Her eyes, which were almost always cast down, when she raised them testified to the purest of souls, and when she smiled, revealing her small, white teeth, one might be tempted to say that a rose is merely a plant, and ivory just an elephant’s tusk.”

“He would have admired one of those fantastic visions, those magic apparitions one sometimes sees in the great theaters of Europe, in which the deafening melodies of an orchestra are made to appear among a deluge of light, a torrent of oriental diamonds and gold surrounded by a diaphanous mist, from which a deity, a sylph comes forward, her feet barely touching the floor encircled and accompanied by a luminous cloud. In her wake flowers shoot forth, a dance bursts out, harmonies awaken, and choirs of devils, nymphs, satyrs, spirits, country maidens, angels, and shepherds dance, shake tambourines gesticulate wildly, and lay tribute at the goddess’s feet.”

“In every instance I noted that a people’s prosperity or misery lay in direct proportion to its freedom or its inhibitions and, along the same lines, of the sacrifice or selfishness of its ancestors.”

“Kapag may mga uban na po akong tulad ng sa inyo at ginugunita ang nakaraan at makita kong gumawa ako alang-alang sa sarili lamang, hindi ginhawa ang magagawa't nararapat gawin ukol sa bayang nagbigay sa akin ng lahat, ukol sa mga mamamayang tumutulong sa aking mabuhay, kapag nagkagayon po, magiging tinik sa akin ang bawat uban, at sa halip na ikaliwalhati ko'y dapat kong ikahiya.”

“Nasa isip ng lahat na ang gobyerno, bilang isang institusyong likha ng tao, ay nangangailangan ng tulong ng lahat, nangangailangan ito ng magpapakita at magpapaalam sa mga tunay na pangyayari.”

“Mga mamamayan din ang mga bumubuo ng gobyerno at sila ang higit na nakapag-aral.' 'Ngunit tulad po ng ibang tao, nagkakamali kaya hindi dapat maging bingi sa kuro-kuro ng iba.”

“Ano sa makatwid ang isang Unibersidad? Isang institusyon para hindi matuto? Nagtitipon-tipon ba ang ilang tao sa ngalan ng kaalaman at pagtuturo para hadlangang matuto ang iba?”

“Naglalaho sa loob ng klase ang mga hadlang na itinatayo ng politika upang hatiin ang mga lahi, natutunaw wari sa alab ng kaalaman at kabataan.”

“Nawalan muli ng isang oras ang buhay ng bawat kabataan, saka isang bahagi ng kaniyang karangalan at paggalang sa sarili, at kapalit ang paglaki sa kalooban ng panghihina ng loob, ng paglalaho ng hilig sa pag-aaral, at pagdaramdam sa loob ng dibdib.”

“Walang mang-aalipin kung walang paaalipin.”

“Ang mga henyong ipinapalagay ng mga karaniwang tao na nauna sa kanilang panahon ay nagmistulang gayon sapagkat tinatanaw ng mga humahatol mula sa malayo o napagkakamalang isang buong siglo ang buntot na tinatahak ng mga naiwanan.”

“Ilang dantaon po mula ngayon, kapag naliwanagan at natubos na ang sangkatauhan, kapag wala nang mga lahi, kapag malaya na ang lahat ng mga bayan, kapag wala nang nang-aalipin at napaaalipin, mga kolonya at mga metropolis, kapag naghahari na ang iisang katarungan at ang bawat isa'y mamamayan na ng daigdig, tanging ang pagsampalataya po sa siyensiya ang malalabi. Magiging singkahulugan ng bulag na pagsamba ang patriyotismo at sinumang magmagaling na nagtataglay ng katangiang ito ay walang alinlangang ibibilanggo na tulad ng isang may nakahahawang sakit, isang manliligalig sa kaayusang lipunan.”

“Nalilimot ng bawat isa sa inyo na habang napag-iingatan ang isang bayan ang kaniyang wika, napag-iingatan din nito ang katibayan ng kaniyang paglaya, katulad ng pagpapanatili ng isang tao sa kaniyang kasarinlan, upang mapanatili niya ang kaniyang sariling paraan ng pag-iisip. Ang wika ang pag-iisip ng bayan.”

“Napakatamis ng tubig at naiinom, bagaman lumulunod sa alak at serbesa at pumapatay sa apoy. Nagiging singaw ito kapag pinainitan; kapag naligalig, nagiging karagatan na minsan nang pumuksa sa sangkatauhan at yumanig sa dibdib ng mundo.”

“Pure intuitive faith differs as much from fanaticism as fire from smoke, or music from mere noise; those who confuse the two are like the deaf.”

“No one blames a pilot who takes refuge in port when the storm begins to blow. It is not cowardice to duck under a bullet; what is wrong is to defy it only to fall and never rise again.”

“I don't see why I should bow my head when I could hold it high, or place it in the hands of my enemies when I can defeat them.”

“For myself I think that one wrong does not right the other, and forgiveness cannot be won with useless tears or alms to the Church.”

“But because their ancestors were men of righteousness, shall we consent to the abuses of their degenerate descendants? Because they did us a great good, would we be guilty if we prevented them from doing us evil?”

“Pero en los momentos critícos de mi vida siempre he obrado contra mi voluntad obedeciendo á distintos fines y á poderosas dusas.”

“¿Sabe V. que es muy triste para mí el perderla á v. después de haberla conocido?”

“¡Ay! tal me ha sucedido siempre en los momentos más dolorosos de mi vida. Mi lengua, asaz habladora, enmudece cuando mi corazón estalla en sentimientos.”

“Cowardice rightly understood begins with selfishness and ends with shame.”

“I have to believe much in God because I have lost my faith in man.”

“It is not the criminals who arouse the hatred of others, but the men who are honest.”

“To be happy does not mean to indulge in foolishness!”