quotes by José Saramago

"Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are."
— José Saramago

"...but it is also true, if this brings her any consolation, that if, before every action, we were to begin weighing up the consequences, thinking about them in earnest, first the immediate consequences, then the probably, then the possible, then the imaginable ones, we should never move beyond the point where our first thought brought us to a halt."
— José Saramago

"We say Fine, even though we may be dying, and this is commonly known as taking one's courage in both hands, a phenomenon that has only been observed in the human species."
— José Saramago

"not only does the universe have its own laws, all of them indifferent to the contradictory dreams and desires of humanity, and in the formulation of which we contribute not one iota, apart, that is, fromm the words by which we clumsily name them, but everything seems to indicate that it uses these laws for aims and objectives that transcend and always will transcend our understanding. "
— José Saramago

"The amber light came on."
— José Saramago

"The sun appears in one of the upper corners of the rectangle, on the left of anyone looking at the picture."
— José Saramago (The Gospel According to Jesus Christ)

"We use words to understand each other and even, sometimes, to find each other."
— José Saramago

"(...) que seria de nós se não sonhássemos."
— José Saramago (Baltasar and Blimunda)

"Deus vê nos corações e não precisa de que alguém absolva em seu nome, e se os pecados forem tão grandes que não devam passa sem castigo, este virá pelo caminho mais curto, querendo o mesmo Deus, ou serão julgados em lugar próprio,quando o fim dos tempos chegar, se, entretanto, as boas acções não compensarem por si mesmas as más"
— José Saramago (Baltasar and Blimunda)

"talvez as lágrimas não sejam mais do que isso, o alívio duma ofensa."
— José Saramago (Baltasar and Blimunda)

"o que vem amanhá é que conta, hoje é sempre nada"
— José Saramago (Baltasar and Blimunda)

"Yet human experience and the practice of communication have shown throughout the ages that definitions are an illusion, like having a speech defect and trying to say love but unable to get the word out, or, better, having a tongue in one's head but unable to feel love."
— José Saramago (The Gospel According to Jesus Christ)

"Oh, I'm not just going too far, I've arrived.
"
— José Saramago

"He did all this with great concentration in order to keep his thoughts at bay, in order to let them in only one at a time, having first asked them what they contained, because you can't be too careful with thoughts, some present themselves to us with a cloying air of false innocence and then, when it's too late, reveal their true wicked selves."
— José Saramago

"The day before is what we bring to the day we're actually living through, life is a matter of carrying along all those days-before just as someone might carry stones, and when we can no longer cope with the load, the work is done, the last day is the only one that is no the day before another day."
— José Saramago (The Cave)

"...this is the way fate usually treats us, it's right there behind us, it has already reached out a hand to touch us on the shoulder while we're still muttering to ourselves, It's all over, that's it, who cares anyhow."
— José Saramago (The Tale of the Unknown Island)

"The moral conscience that so many thoughtless people have offended against and many more have rejected, is something that exists and has always existed. It was not an invention of the philosophers of the Quartenary, when the soul was little more than a muddled proposition. With the passing of time, as well as then social evolution and genetic exchange, we ended up putting our conscience in the colour of blood and in the salt of tears, and, as if that were not enough, we made our eyes into a kind of mirror turned inwards, with the result that they often show without reserve what we are verbally trying to deny. Add to this general observation, the particular circumstance that in simple spirits, the remorse caused by committing some evil act often becomes confused with ancestral fears of every kind, and the result will be that the punishment of the prevaricator ends up being, without mercy or pity, twice what he deserved."
— José Saramago