José Saramago Quotes

Not only does the universe have its own laws, all of them indifferent to the contradictory dreams an...

We are so afraid of the idea of having to die… that we always try to find excuses for the dead, as i...

what is right and what is wrong are simply different ways of understanding our relationships with th...

You never know beforehand what people are capable of, you have to wait, give it time, it's time that...

The trouble with this dog is that it has grown too close to human beings, it will suffer as they do.

...the human being to lack that second skin we call egoism has not yet been born, it lasts much long...

Virtue, should there be anyone who still ignores the fact, always finds pitfalls on the extremely di...

If I'm sincere today, what does it matter if I regret it tomorrow?

There are things we do automatically, our body, acting on its own, avoids inconvenience whenever pos...

a man was on his way to the gallows when he met another, who asked him: where are you going, my frie...

Liking is probably the best form of ownership, and ownership the worst form of liking.

He imagined that he was looking for her and couldn't find her anywhere, that the two of them were lo...

...sleep is a skilled magician, it changes the proportions of things, the distances between them, it...

The virtue of maps, they show what can be done with limited space, they foresee that everything can ...

Holding the lamb in his arms, Jesus watched the people file past, some coming, some going, some carr...

The lamb, having survived the storm unharmed and no longer afraid, came up to Jesus and put its mout...

Unlike Joseph her husband, Mary is neither upright nor pious, but she is not blame for this, the bla...

…the worshipers here are not likely to kill one another, they all offer the same sacrifice, and how ...

Time and time again one has seen, even in people not particularly given to reflection, that the best...

We have an odd relationship with words. We learn a few when we are small, throughout our lives we co...

Such is our need to shower blame on some distant entity when it is we who lack the courage to face u...

Chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered.

..there are times when it is best to be content with what one has, so as not to lose everything.

There are such moments in life, when, in order for heaven to open, it is necessary for a door to clo...

... that's how life should be, when one person loses heart, the other must have heart and courage en...

The worst pain ... isn't the pain you feel at the time, it's the pain you feel later on when there's...

Indeed, very few people are aware that in each of our fingers, located somewhere between the first p...

Human vocabulary is still not capable, and probably never will be, of knowing, recognizing, and comm...

... we are only ever pretending to ourselves, never to other people ...

... time is a master of ceremonies who always ends up putting us in our rightful place, we advance, ...

A person is not like a thing that you put down in one place and leave, a person moves, thinks, asks,...

... the best way of killing a rose is to force it open when it is still only the promise of a bud.

... that destiny has to make many turnings before arriving anywhere, destiny alone knows what it has...

It will no longer be necessary to leave one's own home in order to find work in the surrounding dist...

There is nothing healthier for a man than to walk on his own two legs

The threat of rain appears to have nothing to do with Joao Elvas's desire to be alone, and one must ...

Whether is is a good or bad deal depends, for money does not always keep its value, unlike mankind, ...

old photographs are very deceiving, they give us the illusion that we are alive in them, and it's no...

There are people like Senhor José everywhere, who fill their time, or what they believe to be their ...

Contrary to what is generally believed, meaning and sense were never the same thing, meaning shows i...

Men are all the same, they think that because they came out of the belly of a woman they know all th...

We've all had our moments of weakness, and if we manage to get through today without any, we'll be s...

A human being is a being who is constantly 'under construction,' but also, in a parallel fashion, al...

Because each of you has his or her own death, you carry it with you in a secret place from the momen...

Fear can cause blindness, said the girl with dark glasses, Never a truer word, that could not be tru...

The church has never been asked to explain anything, our speciality, along with ballistics, has alwa...

This is neither the time nor the place, however, to ponder how often the soul, in order to be able t...

Everything is argued over in this world. Apart from only one thing that is not argued over. Nobody a...

Authoritarian, paralyzing, circular, occasionally elliptical stock phrases, also jocularly referred ...

...we confidently say that it's not worth trying to reach any conclusions merely because we decide t...

That's a rather subversive idea, isn't it? "Do you think so? I don't. If it is subversive, then ever...

the doves, as we know, must be killed according to the law before Mary’s purification can be acknowl...

The instant is gone, time has carried us into the realm of memory, it was like this, no, it was not,...

Truth and falsehood pass through the same lips and leave no mark, the devil does not cease to be the...

He could see perfectly well that "it," his life, was leading nowhere, that he wss behaving like a mi...

Everyone wants to save Man, but no one wants to know about men.

but the effort of setting the table, heating up the food and then washing the dishes seemed to him t...

how often fears come to sour our life and prove, in the end, to have no foundation, no reason to exi...

Don't let the devil hear you, minister, The devil has such good hearing he doesn't need things to be...

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

In a matter of a moment the amount of sand in the upper part of the hour-glass had dwindled dramatic...

Reading is probably another way of being in a place.

Whether we like it or not, the one justification for the existence of all religions is death, they n...

The moral conscience that so many thoughtless people have offended against and many more have reject...

Fortunately the essence of this revelation did not escape Mary despite the angel's obscure speech, a...

... it's all words and only words, and beyond the words there's nothing... a word, which, like all t...

...sometimes I do actually forget that the person to whom I owe that love is a real person, complete...

A full moon, although less splendid than that earlier on,lit everything around. Before I reached the...

The attitude of insolent haughtiness is characteristic of the relationships Americans form with what...

I presume that nobody will deny the positive aspects of the North American cultural world. These are...

I never appreciated 'positive heroes' in literature. They are almost always cliches, copies of copie...

In the end, I am quite normal. I don't have odd habits. I don't dramatize. Above all, I do not roman...

It is economic power that determines political power, and governments become the political functiona...

Death is present every day in our lives. It's not that I take pleasure in the morbid fascination of ...

Though I had come into the world on 16 November 1922, my official documents show that I was born two...

I think the novel is not so much a literary genre, but a literary space, like a sea that is filled b...

I am traveling less in order to be able to write more. I select my travel destinations according to ...

These earthenware bowls are fragile and easily broken, they are only made of a little clay on which ...

Yes, My Son, man is a piece of wood, that can be used for everything, from the moment he’s born unti...

Perhaps it is the language that chooses the writers it needs, making use of them so that each might ...

Life is like that, full of words that are not worth saying or that were worth saying once but not an...

I had no idea you were capable of such a diabolical plan, Human, my friend, just human, the devil do...

Dignity has no price, when someone starts making small concessions, in the end, life loses all meani...

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

En su habitación del hotel la muerte, desnuda, está delante del espejo. No sabe quién es.

Words have their own hierarchy, their own protocol, their own artistic titles, their own plebeian st...

Assim é, mas a vantagem da igreja é que, embora às vezes o não pareça, ao gerir o que está no alto, ...

However hard he tried, he could never manage to make himself visible to human eyes and not because h...

Events went on to show that it is not by chance that a prime minister reaches such lofty heights and...

doubt is the privilege of those who have lived a long time,

If, before every action, we were to begin by weighing up the consequences, thinking about them in ea...

Why they were loaded with bags of beans and peas and anything else they happened to pick up when the...

We all have our moments of weakness, just as well that we are capable of weeping, tears are often ou...

blindness is a private matter between a person and the eyes with which he or she was born.

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