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Iberia Quotes
Iberia
by
James A. Michener3,355 ratings, 3.71 average rating, 284 reviews
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Iberia Quotes
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“like a good Spaniard he needed words as much as he needed money, and the words he wanted had to be the most expansive and inflated available. In Spain words form a kind of currency which must be spent freely, and to do this is not easy for an American, yet not to do it in Spain is to miss the spirit of human relationships.”
― Iberia
― Iberia
“For of this world one never sees enough and to dine in harmony with nature is one of the gentlest and loveliest things we can do.”
― Iberia
― Iberia
“From the time that money began to be regarded with honor, the real value of things was forgotten.”
― Iberia
― Iberia
“Human affairs are not so happily arranged that the best things please the most men. It is the proof of a bad cause when it is applauded by the mob.”
― Iberia
― Iberia
“How utterly lovely the Puerta del Sol was in those days, how exciting for a foreign tourist! This word has come into ill repute in recent years, because so many tourists have gone abroad with no preparation which would enable them to appreciate what they were about to see and no humility to make them approach the country on its own terms. In Spain I have always been a tourist and have been rather proud of that fact. This is the book of a tourist and the experiences described herein, are those which are open to any intelligent traveler. If, as I once heard an Englishman say, "to be a tourist is to stand gape-eyed with love," I have been one, and never more so that in my first days in Puerta del Sol. p376”
― Iberia
― Iberia
“To travel across Spain and finally to reach Barcelona is like drinking a respectable red wine and finishing up with a bottle of champagne.”
― Iberia
― Iberia
“I asked myself the question which perplexes many people who wish to visit Spain: "If I was once so committed to a Republican victory, how can I bear to visit Spain now?" I have often wondered, for after the destruction of the Republicans, I went through a period of bitterness in which I did not care ever again to see Spain, and I would schedule my trips through Europe so as to avoid it. Then two things happened. One day, while talking to a group of Spanish exiles in Mexico, I asked myself, "Why should I allow Franco to deprive me of a land which is almost as much mine as his?" More important, as I studied the world I came to the conclusion that each nation, at the end of a cycle of about twenty-five years, starts anew. What went before is historically important and probably sets a limit to what the newborn nation can become, but the fact is that the past is past and a new nation is in being, with fresh possibilities for success or failure. That is why General de Gaulle has been so right in France; he is governing an entirely new country not bound by the debacle of 1941. That is why the young Germans are so right in disclaiming responsibility for 1935-1945; they're a new moon, and they are correct in insisting that they be so treated. It is obviously true of China, though most of us have been reluctant to admit it. And one of these days it will be true even of Russia, and we had better be prepared to admit that, too.
It also applied to the United States, though we fight against it and blind our eye and conscience to the fact. The median age of our population is lower now. We are more overcrowded, more urban, and whether we like it or not, a permanently mixed nation racially. We are in the midst of swift change in education, technology, labor relations and religion. We are evolving a new morality, a new posture in world politics. Yet we refuse to understand that the advent of such change signifies also the advent of a new nation. The people of Spain seem more prepared to accept their new nation than we are to accept ours, and it may be this reluctance to accept the new that will destroy us.
As a matter of fact, I suspect that the rebirth of each nation occurs about every seventeen or eighteen years, but only the rare social scientist can recognize the change as it occurs. I usually seem to be about seven years tardy. America's present cycle will end sometime around 1970, and if we try to govern our new nation by 1920 policies we shall be truly doomed. Spain's last cycle ended about 1964, and it is the opportunity to watch a new nation coming into being that makes a visit to Spain so instructive and rewarding. p822”
― Iberia
It also applied to the United States, though we fight against it and blind our eye and conscience to the fact. The median age of our population is lower now. We are more overcrowded, more urban, and whether we like it or not, a permanently mixed nation racially. We are in the midst of swift change in education, technology, labor relations and religion. We are evolving a new morality, a new posture in world politics. Yet we refuse to understand that the advent of such change signifies also the advent of a new nation. The people of Spain seem more prepared to accept their new nation than we are to accept ours, and it may be this reluctance to accept the new that will destroy us.
As a matter of fact, I suspect that the rebirth of each nation occurs about every seventeen or eighteen years, but only the rare social scientist can recognize the change as it occurs. I usually seem to be about seven years tardy. America's present cycle will end sometime around 1970, and if we try to govern our new nation by 1920 policies we shall be truly doomed. Spain's last cycle ended about 1964, and it is the opportunity to watch a new nation coming into being that makes a visit to Spain so instructive and rewarding. p822”
― Iberia
“This was never a Spanish trait. It was a Jewish and a Muslim trait, and fortunately for us [doctors] it was adopted by our society.
"Our pragmatic attitude to medicine allows us much mental space for speculation in other fields. No group in Spain reads as much as we do. In all languages. We're the educated ones... in medicine and everything else. You see my books. I don't buy them because they have pretty covers, but because I need to know what's going on in the world.
"This means that we come to have the reputation of knowing more that we really do. But we try to know, therefore we are applauded by the people. Oftentimes the doctor is the only educated man a family will know. His opinion is given more weight perhaps than it deserves. But if you look at Spain's position in the world at large, you find that it is only our doctors who stand at the top when judged internationally. We produce good men who do their best to keep up with what's happening in Vienna and Massachusetts General.
"Now, because of our unusual position in Spanish life, we find ourselves constantly invited to lead liberal movements. I suppose doctors the world over incline toward the left in politics, because we see society as a whole. We are driven to become intermediaries because of the trust imposed upon us, and as learned men we must lean toward social justice and a more liberal interpretation of society.
"But let's confine ourselves to Spain. The average family knows only two persons in whom it can trust, the doctor and the priest, and since the priest is obligated to support a certain status quo of which his church is a major component, the family can look only to the doctor for the liberal interpretation toward which it may be groping.
"I've thought about this a great deal, because in Spain, doctors have been foremost champions of advance, as they are everywhere, and I've come to two conclusions. We are able to espouse liberal causes where others would be afraid to do so, because we have a prepared position to which we can retreat. If we are savagely rebuffed in attempting to get better housing, we can still live, because doctors are needed. We can absorb enormous defeats and still live. A priest might be thrown out of the Church. A newspaper editor might be fired and be unable to find work. But we have that prepared position.
"The second factor is that because medicine was for so long the perogative of Jews and Muslims, children of the best families won't go into it. Only the middle-class families provide medical students. When I was a student in Sevilla we had a young duque in class. He asked me one day what I was going to be, and when I said, 'Medico,' he said, 'My God, I'd rather be a bullfighter.' To boys like me medicine was a form of democratic opportunity, the escape from the mediocrity, and that's true of all the doctors you see. Middle-class origins, first-class brains. That's a powerful combination. But having come from such backgrounds, we have a natural interest in social betterment, as all doctors should, and I judge that accounts for our favorable position." p665”
― Iberia
"Our pragmatic attitude to medicine allows us much mental space for speculation in other fields. No group in Spain reads as much as we do. In all languages. We're the educated ones... in medicine and everything else. You see my books. I don't buy them because they have pretty covers, but because I need to know what's going on in the world.
"This means that we come to have the reputation of knowing more that we really do. But we try to know, therefore we are applauded by the people. Oftentimes the doctor is the only educated man a family will know. His opinion is given more weight perhaps than it deserves. But if you look at Spain's position in the world at large, you find that it is only our doctors who stand at the top when judged internationally. We produce good men who do their best to keep up with what's happening in Vienna and Massachusetts General.
"Now, because of our unusual position in Spanish life, we find ourselves constantly invited to lead liberal movements. I suppose doctors the world over incline toward the left in politics, because we see society as a whole. We are driven to become intermediaries because of the trust imposed upon us, and as learned men we must lean toward social justice and a more liberal interpretation of society.
"But let's confine ourselves to Spain. The average family knows only two persons in whom it can trust, the doctor and the priest, and since the priest is obligated to support a certain status quo of which his church is a major component, the family can look only to the doctor for the liberal interpretation toward which it may be groping.
"I've thought about this a great deal, because in Spain, doctors have been foremost champions of advance, as they are everywhere, and I've come to two conclusions. We are able to espouse liberal causes where others would be afraid to do so, because we have a prepared position to which we can retreat. If we are savagely rebuffed in attempting to get better housing, we can still live, because doctors are needed. We can absorb enormous defeats and still live. A priest might be thrown out of the Church. A newspaper editor might be fired and be unable to find work. But we have that prepared position.
"The second factor is that because medicine was for so long the perogative of Jews and Muslims, children of the best families won't go into it. Only the middle-class families provide medical students. When I was a student in Sevilla we had a young duque in class. He asked me one day what I was going to be, and when I said, 'Medico,' he said, 'My God, I'd rather be a bullfighter.' To boys like me medicine was a form of democratic opportunity, the escape from the mediocrity, and that's true of all the doctors you see. Middle-class origins, first-class brains. That's a powerful combination. But having come from such backgrounds, we have a natural interest in social betterment, as all doctors should, and I judge that accounts for our favorable position." p665”
― Iberia
“Here envy and lies have kept me imprisoned.
Happy the humble state of the wise man who retires from this nefarious world, and with meager table and house in the pleasant countryside passes his life alone; he serves only God, neither envied nor envious.”
― Iberia
Happy the humble state of the wise man who retires from this nefarious world, and with meager table and house in the pleasant countryside passes his life alone; he serves only God, neither envied nor envious.”
― Iberia
“the only thing in nature that moved was the sun, terrible and metallic as it inched its way across that indifferent sky.”
― Iberia
― Iberia
“why not a beauty like Murcia near the Mediterranean, or Jaén in the mountains, or Oviedo, where the relics of Christ were kept? “Why Badajoz?”
― Iberia
― Iberia
“The traveler wishing to observe Islamic Spain has his choice of two cities, Granada with its Alhambra or Córdoba with its Great Mosque (in Spanish Mezquita). Of the two former is be a considerable degree the more exciting and also the easier to absorb for its buildings, gardens and geographic settings are immediately recognizable as significant. It would take a dull man to miss the point of Granada, for its Alhambra is a museum of Islamic memories.”
― Iberia
― Iberia
