José Saramago

“the map they are using does not indicate the village of Orce, how very inconsiderate on the part of the cartographers, I’ll bet they didn’t forget to indicate their own hometowns, in future they should remember how vexing it is for someone to check out his birthplace on a map only to find a blank space, this has given rise to the gravest of problems for those trying to establish personal and national identities.”

“one could argue that those who have abandoned their homes do not deserve to live there and enjoy them”

“Reading is probably another way of being in a place.”

“We all have our moments of weakness, just as well that we are still capable of weeping, tears are often our salvation, there are times when we would die if we did not weep - Blindness”

“Gostar é provavelmente a melhor maneira de ter,ter deve ser a pior maneira de gostar.”

“So sehr kann der Geist sich täuschen, wenn er sich den Monstern ergibt, die er selber erschaffen hat.”

“Es gibt Situationen, da sind Wörter nutzlos, ich wollte, ich könnte auch weinen, alles mit Tränen sagen, und müsste nicht sprechen.”

“Life is like that, full of words that are not worth saying or that were worth saying once but not any more, each word that we utter will take up the space of another more deserving word, not deserving in its own right, but because of the possible consequences of saying it.”

“Men are all the same, they think that because they came out of the belly of a woman they know all there is to know about women.”

“The moral conscience that so many thoughtless people have offended against and many more have rejected, is something that exists and has always existed. It was not an invention of the philosophers of the Quartenary, when the soul was little more than a muddled proposition. With the passing of time, as well as then social evolution and genetic exchange, we ended up putting our conscience in the colour of blood and in the salt of tears, and, as if that were not enough, we made our eyes into a kind of mirror turned inwards, with the result that they often show without reserve what we are verbally trying to deny. Add to this general observation, the particular circumstance that in simple spirits, the remorse caused by committing some evil act often becomes confused with ancestral fears of every kind, and the result will be that the punishment of the prevaricator ends up being, without mercy or pity, twice what he deserved.”

“o que vem amanhá é que conta, hoje é sempre nada”

“talvez as lágrimas não sejam mais do que isso, o alívio duma ofensa.”

“Deus vê nos corações e não precisa de que alguém absolva em seu nome, e se os pecados forem tão grandes que não devam passa sem castigo, este virá pelo caminho mais curto, querendo o mesmo Deus, ou serão julgados em lugar próprio,quando o fim dos tempos chegar, se, entretanto, as boas acções não compensarem por si mesmas as más”

“(...) que seria de nós se não sonhássemos.”

“We use words to understand each other and even, sometimes, to find each other.”

“Yet human experience and the practice of communication have shown throughout the ages that definitions are an illusion, like having a speech defect and trying to say love but unable to get the word out, or, better, having a tongue in one's head but unable to feel love.”

“...this is the way fate usually treats us, it's right there behind us, it has already reached out a hand to touch us on the shoulder while we're still muttering to ourselves, It's all over, that's it, who cares anyhow.”

“The day before is what we bring to the day we're actually living through, life is a matter of carrying along all those days-before just as someone might carry stones, and when we can no longer cope with the load, the work is done, the last day is the only one that is not the day before another day.”

“...bien vistas las cosas, no hay en el mundo nada que, en sentido absoluto, nos pertenezca, verdad ésta no menos transparente.”

“...no es por el aspecto de la cara ni por la presteza del cuerpo por lo que se conoce la fuerza del corazón.”

“...Y cuándo es necesario matar, se preguntó a sí misma mientras se dirigía hacia el zaguán, y a sí misma se respondió, Cuando está muerto lo que aún está vivo.”

“. . . if there is a way for the world to be transformed for the better, it can only be done by pessimism; optimists will never change the world for the better. ”

“la ceguera no se pega, tampoco la muerte se pega, y todos nos morimos.”

“Bien gracias..., es lo que decimos cuando no queremos mostrar nuestra debilidad, decimos, Bien, aunque nos estemos muriendo, a esto le llama el vulgo hacer de tripas corazón, fenómeno de conversión visceral que sólo en la especie humana ha sido observado.”

“De esa masa estamos hechos, mitad indiferencia y mitad ruindad.”

“la ceguera es una cuestión privada entra la persona y los ojos con que nació.”

“...aquellos sentimientos de generosidad y de altruismo que son, como todo el mundo sabe, dos de las mejores características del género humano, que pueden hallarse, incluso, en delincuentes más empedernidos...”

“es como si estuviera en medio de una niebla espesa, es como si hubiera caído en un mar de leche”

“He did all this with great concentration in order to keep his thoughts at bay, in order to let them in only one at a time, having first asked them what they contained, because you can't be too careful with thoughts, some present themselves to us with a cloying air of false innocence and then, when it's too late, reveal their true wicked selves.”

“Oh, I'm not just going too far, I've arrived.”

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

“If, before every action, we were to begin by weighing up the consequences, thinking about them in earnest, first the immediate consequences, then the probable, then the possible, then the imaginable ones, we should never move beyond the point where our first thought brought us to a halt. The good and evil resulting from our words and deeds go on apportioning themselves, one assumes in a reasonably uniform and balanced way, throughout all the days to follow, including those endless days, when we shall not be here to find out, to congratulate ourselves or ask for pardon, indeed there are those who claim that this is the much talked of immortality.”

“When we are born, when we enter this world, it is as if we signed a pact for the rest of our life, but a day may come when we will ask ourselves Who signed this on my behalf?”

“The most common occurrence in this world of ours, in these days of stumbling blindly forward, is to come across men and women mature in years and ripe in prosperity, who, at eighteen, were not just beaming beacons of style, but also, and perhaps above all, bold revolutionaries determined to bring down the system supported by their parents and to replace it, at last, with a fraternal paradise, but who are now equally firmly attached to convictions and practices which, having warmed up and flexed their muscles on any of the many available versions of moderate conservatism, become, in time, pure egotism of the most obscene and reactionary kind. Put less respectfully, these men and these women, standing before the mirror of their life, spit every day in the face of what they were with the sputum of what they are.”

“The sun appears in one of the upper corners of the rectangle, on the left of anyone looking at the picture.”

“Words are like that, they deceive, they pile up, it seems they do not know where to go, and, suddenly, because of two or three or four that suddenly come out, simple in themselves, a personal pronoun, an adverb, an adjective, we have the excitement of seeing them coming irresistibly to the surface through the skin and the eyes and upsetting the composure of our feelings, sometimes the nerves that can not bear it any longer, they put up with a great deal, they put up with everything, it was as if they were wearing armor, we might say.”

“........pero quiero encontrar la isla desconocida, quiero saber quien soy you cuando este en ella. No lo sabes, Si no sales de ti, no llegas a saber quien eres.....”

“SI NO SALES DE TI ,NO LLEGAS A SABER QUIEN ERES.CONSIDERO QUE ESTAR, ENCERRADO EN TI MISMO Y NO MIRAR A TU ALREDEDOR,TE ALEJA DE LA REALIDAD NO PERMITIENDOTE VIVIR.”

“Y esa isla desconocida, si la encuentras sera para mi, a ti rey, solo te interesan las islas conocidas.”

“tambien de este modo como el destino acostumbra a comportarse con nosotros, ya esta pisandonos los talones, ya extendio la mano para tocarnos en el hombro, y nosotros todavia vamos murmurando, Se acabo, no hay nada mas que ver, todo es igual”

“a man was on his way to the gallows when he met another, who asked him: where are you going, my friend? and the condemned man replied: i'm not going anywhere. they're taking me by force.”

“but it is also true, if this brings her any consolation, that if, before every action, we were to begin weighing up the consequences, thinking about them in earnest, first the immediate consequences, then the probably, then the possible, then the imaginable ones, we should never move beyond the point where our first thought brought us to a halt.”

“The amber light came on.”

“We say Fine, even though we may be dying, and this is commonly known as taking one's courage in both hands, a phenomenon that has only been observed in the human species.”

“Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are.”

“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.”