Claraboia Quotes

“..عندما تكبر ستريد أن تكون سعيداً. أنت الآن لا تفكر في الأمر ولهذا بالذات أنت سعيد. عندما ستفكر، عندما تريد أن تكون سعيداً، ستكفّ عن البقاء سعيداً. إلى الأبد، ربّما إلى الأبد.. هل تسمعني؟ إلى الأبد. وكلّما كانت رغبتك في السعادة أقوى، ستكون أكثر تعاسة. السعادة ليست أمراً نكسبه. هم يقولون لك هذا. لا تصدقهم. إما أن يكون المرء سعيداً أو لا يكون.”
― جوزيه ساراماجو, Claraboia

“Só quero dizer que aquilo que cada um de nós tiver de ser na vida, não o será pelas palavras que ouve nem pelos conselhos que recebe. Teremos de receber na própria carne a cicatriz que nos transforma em verdadeiros homens.”
― José Saramago, Claraboia

“You love me because you see me every day. You don’t love me for who I am, you love me because of what I do or don’t do. You don’t know who I am.”
― José Saramago, Skylight: A Novel

“Beethoven was ugly too, and no woman ever loved him, and he was Beethoven! He didn’t need to be loved in order to do what he did. He just needed to love and he did.”
― José Saramago, Skylight: A Novel

“Toda a gente quer salvar o Homem, ninguém quer saber dos homens.”
― José Saramago, Claraboia

“Everyone wants to save Man, but no one wants to know about men.”
― José Saramago, Skylight

“They always left the thermos full, ready for their return home. The five minutes devoted to that small late-night feast made them feel rather special, as if they had suddenly left the mediocrity of their lives behind them and risen a few rungs on the economic ladder. The kitchen disappeared and gave way to an intimate little drawing room with expensive furniture and paintings on the wall and a piano in one corner.”
― José Saramago, Skylight: A Novel

“no one has an obligation to love anyone else, but we are all under an obligation to respect each other. According to this logic, Saramago considered”
― José Saramago, Skylight: A Novel

“Now don't run away." "I'm not. I learned to see beyond the soles of these shoes. I learned that behind this wretched life we lead there is a great ideal, a great hope. I learned that each individual life should be guided by that hope and by that ideal. And people who don't feel that must have died before they were born." He smiled and added, "Those aren't my words. It's something I heard someone else say years ago." "In your view ,then, I belong to the group who died before they were born?" "No, you belong to another group, the ones who haven't yet been born." "Aren't you forgetting about all my experience of life?" "Not at all, but experience is only worth anything when it's useful to other people, and you're not useful to anyone.”
― José Saramago, Skylight

“Having is not the same as owning. You can have even those things you don’t want. Owning means having and enjoying the things you have. He had a home, a wife and a son, but none of them was truly his. He only had himself, but even then not entirely.”
― José Saramago, Skylight: A Novel

“They had their past to remember, the present to live in and the future to fear.”
― José Saramago, Skylight: A Novel

“We should be fully engaged with life, each individual should reach out beyond himself. Being merely present isn’t enough. Being a mere witness is tantamount to being dead. That’s what he meant to say. It doesn’t matter if you stay in one spot, but your life should reach out if it is not to be a mere animal existence,”
― José Saramago, Skylight: A Novel

“In all souls, as in all houses, beyond the façade lies a hidden interior. —RAUL BRANDÃO”
― José Saramago, Skylight: A Novel

“Just two tears. That’s all life is worth.”
― José Saramago, Skylight: A Novel

“Change it!" answered Silvestre, also springing to his feet. "How? By loving each other?" Abel's smile vanished when he saw Silvestre's grave expression. "Yes, but loving each other with a lucid, active love, a love that can overcome hatred.”
― José Saramago, Skylight

“It's love," thought Abel, "it's love that gives them this calmness, this peace. And suddenly he was gripped by a violent desire to love, to give himself, to find the red flower of love growing in his arid life.”
― José Saramago, Skylight

“He had grown so accustomed to feeling tired that he took a certain pleasure in it, the pleasure of someone who has given up, the pleasure of someone who, when the moment of truth arrives, turns back the clock and says: "It's too early." The pleasure of self-sacrifice. But sacrifice is only complete when it is kept hidden from view; making it visible is tantamount to saying, "Look at me, look how self-sacrificing I am," and making sure that the other people don't forget it. Therefore he had not yet given up entirely, and behind his resignation hope still lingered, just as the blue sky is always there behind the clouds.”
― José Saramago, Skylight

“The republic was no longer a novelty, and here people only appreciate novelties.”
― José Saramago, Skylight: A Novel

“But the hidden meaning of life is that life has no hidden meaning.” Abel knew Pessoa’s poetry well.”
― José Saramago, Skylight: A Novel

“Understanding, perhaps, but understanding is just a word. No one can understand another person unless he is that other person.”
― José Saramago, Skylight: A Novel

“Aunt Amélia never wasted a word. She said only what was absolutely necessary, but she said it in a way that made those listening appreciate the value of concision. The words seemed to be born in her mouth at the very moment they were spoken and to emerge replete with meaning, heavy with good sense, virginal.”
― José Saramago, Skylight: A Novel

“The hidden meaning of life . . . “But the hidden meaning of life is that life has no hidden meaning.”
― José Saramago, Skylight: A Novel

“On those grim days when he felt surrounded by the vacuum of absurdity, he always felt particularly weary. He tried to blame his weariness on the daily”
― José Saramago, Skylight: A Novel

“That's a rather subversive idea, isn't it? "Do you think so? I don't. If it is subversive, then everything else is too, even breathing. I feel and think as naturally and necessarily as I breathe. If men hate each other, then there is not hope. We will all be the victims of that hate. We will slaughter each other in wars we don't want and for which we're not responsible. They'll put a flag in front of us and fill ours ears with words. And why? To plant the seeds for a new war, to create more hatred, to create new flags and new words. Is that why we're here? To have children and hurl them into the fiery furnace? To build cities and then raze them to the ground? To long for peace and have war instead? "And would love solve everything," asked Able with a sad, slightly ironic smile. "I don't know. It's the only thing we haven't tried so far..." "And will we be in time?" "Possibly. If those who suffer can be convinced that it's true, then yes, we might be in time..." He paused, as if assailed by a sudden thought, "But don't forget, Abel, you must love with a love that is lucid and active! And make sure that the active side never forgets abut the lucid side and that the active side never commits the same kind of villainous deeds as those who want men to hate each other. Active, but lucid. And above all, lucid!”
― José Saramago, Skylight

“Be useful, that's all you ever say to me. But how can I be useful?" "That's something you have to discover for yourself, like everything else in life. No one can give you advice about that. I'd really like to--if I thought it would do any good." "And I'd like to know what you really mean." Silvestri smiled. "Don't worry. All I mean is that we won't become what we are meant to be in life by listening to other people's words or advice. We have to feel in our own flesh the wound that will make us into proper men. Then it's up to us to act...”
― José Saramago, Skylight

“Pleased? On the contrary. I think you're in the grip of tedium. You're tired of life, you think you've learned all there is to learn, and everything you see around you only increases your sense of tedium. Why, then, should I feel pleased? It isn't always easy to cut off a tentacle. You can always leave a boring job and, even more easily, a boring woman, but tedium, how do you cut yourself off from that?”
― José Saramago, Skylight

“The republic was no longer a novelty, and here people only appreciate novelties. We enter like lions and leave like broken old nags.”
― José Saramago, Skylight: A Novel

“Of course it does. I can’t make judgments using other people’s ideas!” “There’s the sticking point! You’re forgetting that other people have their own ideas about good and evil, ideas that might be better than yours . . .” “If everyone thought like you, we would never get anywhere. We need rules, we need laws!”
― José Saramago, Skylight: A Novel

“buying that mask of Beethoven was an impossible dream.”
― José Saramago, Skylight: A Novel

“There are certain words that draw back, that refuse to be uttered, because they are too laden with significance for our word-weary ears.”
― José Saramago, Skylight: A Novel