Quotes Jose Saramago

Quotes Jose Saramago

1.      Each day is a little bit of history.

2.     A journey never ends. Only the travellers end.

3.     Chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered.

4.     In a king, modesty would be a sign of weakness.

5.     A woman is essentially a vessel made to be filled.

6.     Reading is probably another way of being in a place.

7.     As my cat would say, all hours are good for sleeping.

8.     Your questions are false if you already know the answer.

9.     Forgive me if what has seemed little to you, to me is all.

10.  One can show no greater respect than to weep for a stranger.

11.   Creating is always so much more stimulating than destroying.

12.  Words were not given to man in order to conceal his thoughts.

13.  I think we are blind. Blind people who can see, but do not see.

14.  Strictly speaking, we do not make decisions. Decisions make us.

15.  If I’m sincere today, what does it matter if I regret it tomorrow?

16.  Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are.

17.  You know the name you were given, you do not know the name that you have.

18.  Even death, faced with the option of death or life, she would choose life.

19.  The only time we can talk about death is while we’re alive, not afterwards.

20. The difficult thing isn’t living with other people, it’s understanding them.

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

22. Just as the habit does not make the monk, the sceptre does not make the king.

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

24. One cannot be too careful with words, they change their minds just as people do.

25. Today’s bread does not eliminate yesterday’s hunger, much less that of tomorrow.

26. When all is said and done, what is clear is that all lives end before their time.

27. I do not just write, I write what I am. If there is a secret, perhaps that is it.

28. When all is said and done, what is clear is that all lives end before their time.

29. In matters of feeling and of the heart, too much is always better than too little.

30. Consciences keep silence more often than they should, that’s why laws were created.

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José de Sousa Saramago (16 November 1922–18 June 2010), was a Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the human factor.

As of 2016, more than two million copies of Saramago’s books have been sold in Portugal alone and his work has been translated into 25 languages. A proponent of libertarian communism, Saramago was criticized by institutions such as the Catholic Church, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, with whom he disagreed on various issues. An atheist, he defended love as an instrument to improve the human condition. In 1992, the Government of Portugal under Prime Minister Aníbal Cavaco Silva ordered the removal of The Gospel According to Jesus Christ from the Aristeion Prize’s shortlist, claiming the work was religiously offensive. Disheartened by this political censorship of his work, Saramago went into exile on the Spanish island of Lanzarote, upon which he resided until his death in 2010.

With affection,

Ruben