José Saramago Quotes
Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are.
There are such moments in life, when, in order for heaven to open, it is necessary for a door to close.
Even death, faced with the option of death or life, she would choose life.
... that's how life should be, when one person loses heart, the other must have heart and courage enough for both.
Words have their own hierarchy, their own protocol, their own artistic titles, their own plebeian stigmas.
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.
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.
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.
Whether we like it or not, the one justification for the existence of all religions is death, they need death as much as we need bread to eat.
blindness is a private matter between a person and the eyes with which he or she was born.
Liking is probably the best form of ownership, and ownership the worst form of liking.
...the human being to lack that second skin we call egoism has not yet been born, it lasts much longer than the other one, that bleeds so readily.
We've all had our moments of weakness, and if we manage to get through today without any, we'll be sure to have some tomorrow.
Such is our need to shower blame on some distant entity when it is we who lack the courage to face up to what is there before us.
The virtue of maps, they show what can be done with limited space, they foresee that everything can happen therein.
Because each of you has his or her own death, you carry it with you in a secret place from the moment you're born, it belongs to you and you belong to it.
...we confidently say that it's not worth trying to reach any conclusions merely because we decide to stop halfway along the path that would lead us straight to them.
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.
Truth and falsehood pass through the same lips and leave no mark, the devil does not cease to be the devil just because he may have spoken the truth.
The instant is gone, time has carried us into the realm of memory, it was like this, no, it was not, and everything becomes what we choose to invent.
Virtue, should there be anyone who still ignores the fact, always finds pitfalls on the extremely difficult path of perfection, but sin and vice are so favoured by fortune...
I had no idea you were capable of such a diabolical plan, Human, my friend, just human, the devil doesn’t make plans, anyway, if men were good, he wouldn’t even exist.
A human being is a being who is constantly 'under construction, ' but also, in a parallel fashion, always in a state of constant destruction.
We are so afraid of the idea of having to die… that we always try to find excuses for the dead, as if we were asking beforehand to be excused when it is our turn…
These earthenware bowls are fragile and easily broken, they are only made of a little clay on which fortune has precariously bestowed a shape, and the same could be said of mankind.
This is neither the time nor the place, however, to ponder how often the soul, in order to be able to boast of a clean body, has burdened itself with sadness, envy, and impurity.
Authoritarian, paralyzing, circular, occasionally elliptical stock phrases, also jocularly referred to as nuggets of wisdom, are a malignant plague, one of the very worst ever to ravage the earth.
En su habitación del hotel la muerte, desnuda, está delante del espejo. No sabe quién es.
Whether is is a good or bad deal depends, for money does not always keep its value, unlike mankind, whose value is always the same, everything and nothing.
There is nothing healthier for a man than to walk on his own two legs
Assim é, mas a vantagem da igreja é que, embora às vezes o não pareça, ao gerir o que está no alto, governa o que está em baixo.
... the best way of killing a rose is to force it open when it is still only the promise of a bud.
... time is a master of ceremonies who always ends up putting us in our rightful place, we advance, stop, and retreat according to his orders, our mistake lies in imagining that we can catch him out.
what is right and what is wrong are simply different ways of understanding our relationships with the others, not that which we have with ourselves
The trouble with this dog is that it has grown too close to human beings, it will suffer as they do.
Dignity has no price, when someone starts making small concessions, in the end, life loses all meaning.
We all have our moments of weakness, just as well that we are capable of weeping, tears are often our salvation, there are times when we would die if we did not weep…
..there are times when it is best to be content with what one has, so as not to lose everything.
but the effort of setting the table, heating up the food and then washing the dishes seemed to him tonight a superhuman one.
how often fears come to sour our life and prove, in the end, to have no foundation, no reason to exist
... that destiny has to make many turnings before arriving anywhere, destiny alone knows what it has cost ...