"A woman is essentially a vessel made to be filled."
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Quote collection
Jose Saramago quotes (page 5 of 11)
209 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The best way to killing a rose is to force it open when it is still only the promise of a bud."
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"Writer's make national literature, while translators make universal literature."
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"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."
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"Every second that passes is like a door that opens to allow in what has not yet happened, what we call the future, but, to challenge the contradictory nature of what we have just said, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the future is just an immense void, that the future is just the time on which the eternal present feeds."
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"One can show no greater respect than to weep for a stranger."
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"I never appreciated 'positive heroes' in literature. They are almost always cliches, copies of copies, until the model is exhausted. I prefer perplexity, doubt, uncertainty, not just because it provides a more 'productive' literary raw material, but because that is the way we humans really are."
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"Words were not given to man in order to conceal his thoughts."
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"We're not short of movements proclaiming that a different world is possible, but unless we can coordinate them into an international movement, capitalism just laughs at all these little organisations."
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"You never know beforehand what people are capable of, you have to wait, give it time, it's time that rules, time is our gambling partner on the other side of the table and it holds all the cards of the deck in its hand, we have to guess the winning cards of life, our lives."
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"The wise man contents himself with what he has, until such time as he invents something better."
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"Often when you ask for one thing you receive another, this is the mysterious thing about prayer, we address them to heaven with some private intention, but they choose their own path, sometimes they delay, allowing other prayers to overtake them, frequently they overlap and become hybrid prayers of dubious origin, which quarrel and argue among themselves."
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"The church has never been asked to explain anything, our speciality, along with ballistics, has always been the neutralisation of the overly curious mind through faith."
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"Perhaps it is the language that chooses the writers it needs, making use of them so that each might express a tiny part of what it is."
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"Death is present every day in our lives. It's not that I take pleasure in the morbid fascination of it, but it is a fact of life."
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"The ear has to be educated if one wishes to appreciate musical sounds, just as the eyes must learn to distinguish the value of words."
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"Each part in itself constitutes the whole to which it belongs."
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"...the habit of falling hardens the body, reaching the ground, to in itself, is a relief."
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"Oh, I'm not just going too far, I've arrived."
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"The problem is that the right doesn't need any ideas to govern, but the left can't govern without ideas."
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