The Fencing Master

Actually loneliness has a kind of fascination; it's a state of egotistical, inner grace that you can achieve only by standing guard on old, forgotten roads that no one travels anymore.

It really doesn't bother me," she said. "I've always thought it stupid to try to hide your age, or to pretend to be younger than you are. Denying your age is like denying your life.

We find ourselves in the last of the three generations history chooses to repeat every now and then. The first generation needs a god, and so they invent one. The second erects temples to that god and tries to imitate him. And the third uses the marble from those temples to build brothels in which to worship their own greed, lust, and dishonesty. And that is why gods and heroes are always, inevitably, succeeded by mediocrities, cowards, and imbeciles.

The ghosts of the people we could have been and weren't ... Isn't that what it is? The people we dreamed of being, until we were forced to wake from the dream." She was talking in a monotone, as if reciting from memory a lesson learned long ago. "The ghosts of those whom once we loved but never had, of those who loved us and whose hopes we destroyed out of malice, stupidity, or ignorance.

You're forgetting about God. He doesn't interest me. God tolerates the intolerable, he is irresponsible and inconsistent. He is not a gentleman.

It's a beautiful thing to refuse to forget...

You can get used to anything, especially when you have no option. If you have to pay, you pay; it's just a question of attitude. At a particular moment in your life you adopt a certain position, whether mistaken or not. You decide to be like this or that. You burn your boats, and then all you can do is defend that position, come what may.

As for myself, I would just say that, because of what I am, I can at least look myself in the face when I stand before the mirror each morning to shave. And that, madam, is more than many men I know can do.

There are very subtle shades of violence, I can assure you. A civilization that renounces the possibility of resorting to violence in thought or deed destroys itself. It becomes a flock of sheep that will get their throats cut by the first person to come along. The same thing happens to men.

When it comes to politics and women, you have to taste all the sauces, but you must never let either one or the other give you indigestion.

I have spent my whole life trying to preserve a certain idea of myself, and that is all. You have to cling to a set of values that do not depreciate with time. Everything else is the fashion of the moment, fleeting, mutable. In a word, nonsense.

It seemed to Don Jaime that you could find in the memory of every man the bittersweet shadow of a woman.

Don Jaime relied on this to conserve what he defined as serenity: peace of mind and soul, the only fragment of wisdom to which human imperfection could aspire. His whole life lay before him, smooth, broad, and definitive, as untroubled by uncertainty as a river flowing to the sea.

What happens is that Fate, which enjoys spicing things up with a dash of the unforeseen, determines that everything must have an end, and forces one of the combatants, sooner or later, to make a mistake. It is therefore merely a matter of keeping Fate at bay long enough for the other man to make a mistake first. Anything else is pure illusion.

¿Sabe cuál es el problema? Nos encontramos en la última de tres generaciones que la Historia tiene el capricho de repetir de cuando en cuando. La primera necesita un Dios, y lo inventa. La segunda levanta templos a ese Dios e intenta imitarlo. Y la tercera utiliza el mármol de esos templos para construir prostíbulos donde adorar su propia codicia, su lujuria y su bajeza. Y es así como a los dioses y los héroes los suceden siempre, inevitablemente, los mediocres, los cobardes y los imbéciles.

Love, Don Jaime, love," he went on after a moment of sad reflection. "That is the only thing that can make us happy and, paradoxically, it is also the thing that condemns us to our worst torments. To love is to be enslaved.

However, one certainty floated in the air: that night, at the end of a conversation that should have brought them closer, something had been broken between them, definitively and forever. He did not know what, but there was the unmistakable noise of pieces shattering to the ground about him. The young woman would never forgive him for his cowardice -- or for his resignation.

I have only my sins to blame for the state I'm in today.

Sabe qual é o problema? Encontramo-nos na última de três gerações que a História tem o capricho de repetir de quando em quando. A primeira precisa de um Deus, e inventa-o. A segunda ergue templos a esse Deus e tenta imitá-lo. E a terceira utiliza o mármore desses templos para construir prostíbulos onde adorar a sua própria cobiça, a sua luxúria e a sua baixeza. E é assim que aos deuses e aos heróis sucedem sempre, inevitavelmente, os medíocres, os cobardes e os imbecis.

... no trap can be successful without uncounsciously cooperation from a victim. No one forces the mouse to seek cheese in a mousetrap.

A world, in which we wouldn't expect anything from others, would be a hell.

A sword is like communion. It's appropriate to approach it with prepared body and soul.

Y ya que menciona el tema, le diré que prefiero ser gobernado por César o Bonaparte, a quienes siempre puedo intentar asesinar si no me placen, antes que ver decidirse mis aficiones, costumbres y compañía por el voto del tendero de la esquina... El drama de nuestro siglo, don Marcelino, es la falta de genio; que sólo es comparable a la falta de coraje y a la falta de buen gusto. Sin duda, eso se debe a la ascensión irrefrenable de los tenderos de todas las esquinas de Europa.

If you're hoping for salvation or whatever, it has very little merit in it. I was referring to the final battle on the threshold of eternal darkness, with oneself the only witness.

Heroes, however, have a habit of ending up dead or bankrupt, and, as you know better than anyone, I have much to lose. At my age and in my profession, prudence is more than just a virtue, it's an instinct.

For the minister, who was far from considering himself a radical on questions of ethics, not all scoundrels were equal; their degree of social acceptability stood in direct relation to each individual's fortune and distinction—especially if, in exchange for that minor moral violation on the minister's part, large material benefits were to be obtained.