“Don't be afraid, the darkness you're in is no greater than the darkness inside your own body, they are two darknesses separated by a skin, I bet you've never thought of that, you carry a darkness about with you all the time and that doesn't frighten you...my dear chap, you have to learn to live with the darkness outside just as you learned to live with the darkness inside”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“old photographs are very deceiving, they give us the illusion that we are alive in them, and it's not true, the person we are looking at no longer exists, and if that person could see us, he or she would not recognise him -- or herself in us, 'Who's that looking at me so sadly,' he or she would say.”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“Strictly speaking, we do not make decisions, decisions make us.”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“إن الصور القديمة تخدعنا كثيرًا، فهي توهمنا بأننا أحياء فيها، وهذا غير صحيح، لأن الشخص الذي ننظر إليه فيها لم يعد موجودًا، ولو كان بمقدوره أن يرانا فلن يتعرف على نفسه فينا، وسيقول من هذا الذي ينظر إليّ بوجه محزون؟.”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“الوحدة لم تكن قط بالرفقة الطيبة، فالأحزان الكبيرة، والإغواءات الكبيرة، والأخطاء الكبيرة هي على الدوام تقريبًا نتيجة بقاء المرء وحيدًا في هذه الحياة.”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“Nothing so tires a person as having to struggle, not with himself, but with an abstraction.”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“فـ الأحزان الكبيرة، والإغواءات الكبيرة، والأخطاء الكبيرة هي على الدوام تقريباً نتيجة بقاء المرء وحيداً في الحياة”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“... we know that it is the search that gives meaning to any find and that one often has to travel a long way in order to arrive at what is near.”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“All the great sadnesses, great temptations, and great mistakes are almost always the result of being alone in life, without a prudent friend to advise us when we are troubled by something more serious than our normal everyday problems.”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“وهؤلاء هم أشخاصٌ يقتصرون على العيش كيفما أتفق ، أشخاصٌ لم يواجهوا القدر قط وجهاً لوجه”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“عندما تحين الفرصة، يمكن حتى للطيبين أن يتحولوا إلى متصلبين ومتجبرين”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“Al contrario de lo que se cree, sentido y significado nunca han sido lo mismo, el significado se queda aquí, es directo, literal, explícito, cerrado en sí mismo, unívoco, podríamos decir, mientras que le sentido no es capaz de permanecer quieto, hierve de segundos sentidos, terceros y cuartos, de direcciones radicales que se van dividiendo y subdividiendo en ramas y ramajes hasta que se pierdende vista, el sentido de cada palabra se parece a una estrella cuando se pone a proyectar mareas vivas por el espacio, vientos cósmicos, perturbaciones magnéticas, aflicciones".”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“Contrary to what is generally believed, meaning and sense were never the same thing, meaning shows itself at once, direct, literal, explicit, enclosed in itself, univocal, if you like, while sense cannot stay still, it seethes with second, third and fourth senses, radiating out in different directions that divide and subdivide into branches and branchlets, until they disappear from view, the sense of every word is like a star hurling spring tides out into space, cosmic winds, magnetic perturbations, afflictions.”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“هناك لحظات في هذه الحياة نطلق فيها العنان لأنفسنا، ولا نتورع عن مكاشفة أول مجهول نصادفه بآلامنا”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“It is well known that the human mind very often makes decisions for reasons it clearly does not know, presumably because it does so after having travelled the paths of the mind at such speed that, afterwards, it cannot recognise those paths, let alone find them again.”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“What torments people have to go through when they leave the safety of their homes to become embroiled in mad adventures.”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“ولم يكن لديه أي سبب للبحث عن أحد ، وخصوصاً في مثل هذه الساعة من الليل”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“الضمائر تصمتُ أكثر مما هو مطلوبٌ منها، ولهذا أبتُدعت القوانين!!”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“إن الصور القديمة تخدعُنا كثيراً، فهي توهمنا بأننا أحياءُ فيها ،وهذا غير صحيح ، لأن الشخص الذي ننظر إليه فيها لم يعد موجوداً”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“...las viejas fotografías engañan mucho, nos dan la ilusión de que estamos vivos en ellas, y no es cierto, la persona a quien estamos mirando ya no existe, y ella, si pudiese vernos, no se reconocería en nosotros.”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“حيثُ تُكرر الكِذبة نَفسها، فـ تتحول إلى حقيقة !”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“..then he added, as if requiring a response to his own remark,
'Probably the greater the difference, the greater the similarity, and the greater the similarity, the greater the difference,' at that moment he did not yet know how right he was.”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“Así como la muerte definitiva es el fruto último de la voluntad de olvido, así la voluntad de recuerdo podrá perpetuarnos la vida.”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“...indeed it is in the General Cemetery that the results of progress are set out before the eyes of the studious or the merely curious, there are even those who say that a cemetery like this is a kind of library which contains not books but buried people, it really doesn't matter, you can learn as much from people as from books.”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“أنت تعرف الاسم الذي أطلقوه عليك، ولكنك لا تعرف الاسم الذي هو لك.”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“نحن في الواقع لا نتخذ القرارات، وإنما القرارات هي التي تتخذنا”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
“المرء لا يحتاج لكي يموت إلاّ أن يكون حياً”
― José Saramago, quote from All the Names
José Saramago
Born place: in Golegã, Azinhaga, Portugal
Born date November 16, 1922
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“I sit in meditation…and soon all sounds, and all one sees and feels, take on imminence, an immanence, as if the Universe were coming to attention, a Universe of which one is the center, a Universe that is not the same yet not different from oneself: within man as within mountains there are many parts of hydrogen and oxygen, of calcium, phosphorus, potassium, and other elements. ‘You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself flows in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars…’(Thomas Traherne, Centuries of Meditation)
The secret of the mountains is that the mountains simply exist, as I do myself: the mountains exist simply, which I do not. The mountains have no ‘meaning,’ they are meaning; the mountains are. The sun is round. I ring with life, and the mountains ring, and when I can hear it, there is a ringing that we share.”
― Peter Matthiessen, quote from The Snow Leopard
“The world's most famous fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, said that once you have eliminated all the possibilities, whatever remains, however improbable, must be true.”
― Siobhan Dowd, quote from The London Eye Mystery
“They reminded me somehow of the peasants in a book by Steinbeck: they were of the city, but they dressed like peasants, they looked like peasants, and they talked like peasants. Their cows were motor-driven milk floats; their tools were mop and pail and kneeling pad; their farms a forest of steel and concrete. In spite of the hairgrips and headscarves, they had their own kind of dignity. They”
― E.R. Braithwaite, quote from To Sir, With Love
“But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from Annabel Lee
“Does "doing exactly what I want" mean not thinking about other people's feelings? Because that's just not the kind of person I am.
Maybe it can mean whatever I want it to mean, like taking care of myselfand not letting people walk over me”
― Carolyn Mackler, quote from The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things
The Good Daughter
Averno
These Shallow Graves
To The Bright Edge o...
Space Cadet
Good Me, Bad MeBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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