One Hundred Years of Solitude Quotes

“He could never understand the sense of a constest in which the two adversaries have agreed upon the rules”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“...because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Her heart of compressed ash, which had resisted the most telling blows of daily reality without strain, fell apart with the first waves of nostalgia. The need to feel sad was becoming a vice as the years echoed her.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“لقد تأنسنت في الُعزلة”
― غابرييل غارسيا ماركيز, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“لقد صمد قلبها الذي من رماد كثيف لأشد ضربات الواقع اليومي إحكامًا دون أن ينكسر، لكنّه انهار أمام أول هجمات الحنين”
― غابرييل غارسيا ماركيز, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“لم تستطع أن تتفادى تشكُّلَ عقدة انقباض في قلبها، وامتلاء عينيها بالدموع”
― غابرييل غارسيا ماركيز, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Optaron por no volver al cine, considerando que ya tenían bastante con sus propias penas para llorar por fingidas desventuras de seres imaginarios.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Cien años de soledad 50 Aniversario

“and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred tears of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“With her waiting she had lost the strength of her thighs, the firmness of her breasts, her habit of tenderness, but she kept the madness of her heart intact.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“... y un millar de invenciones más, tan ingeniosas e insólitas, que José Arcadio Buendía hubiera querido inventar la máquina de la memoria para poder acordarse de todas.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“... porque as estirpes condenadas a cem anos de solidão não tinham uma segunda oportunidade sobre a Terra.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“حمل ابن بيلار تيرنيرا الى بيت جديه، بعد أسبوعين من ولادته. وتقبلته أورسلا باستياء، مذعنة، مرة أخرى، لعناد زوجها، الذي لم يستطع التسامح مع فكرة بقاء فرع من دمه، مبحراً على غير هدى، مع التيار.”
― جابرييل جارسيا ماركيز, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“she had found peace in that house where memories materialized through the strength of implacable evocation and walked like human beings through the cloistered rooms”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“That woman of unbreakable nerves who at no moment in her life had been heard to sing.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Her name was Pilar Ternera. She had been part of the exodus that ended with the founding of Macondo, dragged along by her family in order to separate her from the man who had raped her at fourteen and had continued to love her until she was twenty-two, but who never made up his mind to make the situation public because he was a man
apart. He promised to follow her to the ends of the earth, but only later on, when he put his affairs in order, and she had become tired of waiting for him, always identifying  him with the tall and short, blond and brunet men that her cards promised from land and sea within three days, three months, or three years. With her waiting she had lost the strength
of her thighs, the firmness of her breasts, her habit of tenderness, but she kept the madness of her heart intact. Maddened by that prodigious plaything, José Arcadio followed her path every night through the labyrinth of the room. On a certain occasion he found the door barred, and he knocked several times, knowing that if he had the boldness
to knock the first time he would have had to knock until the last, and after an interminable wait she opened the door for him. During the day, lying down to dream, he would secretly enjoy the memories of the night before. But when she came into the house, merry, indifferent, chatty, he did not have to make any effort to hide his tension, because that woman, whose explosive laugh frightened off the doves, had nothing to do with the invisible power that taught him how to breathe from within  and control his heartbeats, and that had permitted him to understand why man are afraid of death.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“الأدب هو أفضل لعبة اخترعت لخداع الناس”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“But underneath it all she could not conceive that the boy the gypsies took away was the same lout who would eat half a suckling pig for lunch and whose flatulence withered flowers.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Science has eliminated distance,” Melquíades proclaimed. “In a short time, man will be able to see what is happening in any place in the world without leaving his own house.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“إن العلم قد ألغى المسافات.. وبعد زمن قصير سيكون في قدرة الإنسان أن يرى ما يحدث في أي مكان في العالم دون أن يغادر بيته.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“إن ما يشغلني، هو أنك من فرط الحقد على العسكريين ومن فرط صراعك معهم ومن فرط تفكيرك فيهم قد انتهيت كواحد منهم”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“... escarbó tan profundamente en los sentimientos de ella, que buscando el interés encontró el amor, porque tratando de que ella lo quisiera terminó por quererla.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“The only thing that [Amaranta] did not keep in mind in her fearsome plan was that in spite of her pleas to God she might die before Rebeca. That was, in fact, what happened. At the final moment, however, Amaranta did not feel frustrated, but, on the contrary, free of all bitterness because death had awarded her the privilege of announcing itself several years ahead of time. She saw it on one burning afternoon sewing with her on the porch a short time after Meme had left for school. She saw it because it was a woman dressed in blue with long hair, with a sort of antiquated look, and with a certain resemblance to Pilar Ternera during the time when she had helped with the chores in the kitchen. Fernanda was present several times and did not see her, in spite of the fact that she was so real – so human and on one occasion asked of Amaranta the favor of threading a needle. Death did not tell her when she was going to die or whether her hour was assigned before that of Rebeca, but ordered her to begin sewing her own shroud on the next sixth of April. She was authorized to make it as complicated and as fine as she wanted, but just as honestly executed as Rebeca's, and she was told that she would die without pain, fear, or bitterness at dusk on the day that she finished it. Trying to waste the most time possible, Amaranta ordered some rough flax and spun the thread herself. She did it so carefully that the work alone took four years. Then she started the sewing. As she got closer to the unavoidable end she began to understand that only a miracle would allow her to prolong the work past Rebeca's death, but the very concentration gave her the calmness that she needed to accept the idea of frustration.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“En las dos últimas horas de su vida no logró entender por qué había desaparecido el miedo que lo atormentó desde la infancia. Impasible, sin preocuparse siquiera por demostrar su reciente valor, escuchó los interminables cargos de la acusación. Pensaba en Úrsula, que a esa hora debía estar bajo el castaño tomando el café con José Arcadio Buendía. Pensaba en su hija de ocho meses, que aún no tenía nombre, y en el que iba a nacer en agosto, Pensaba en Santa Sofía de la Piedad, a quien la noche anterior dejó salando un venado para el almuerzo del sábado, y añoró su cabello chorreado sobre los hombros y sus pestañas que parecían artificiales. Pensaba en su gente sin sentimentalismos, en un severo ajuste de cuentas con la vida, empezando a comprender cuánto quería en realidad a las personas que más había odiado.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“But the lucidity of her old age allowed her to see, and she said so many times, that the cries of children in their mothers' wombs are not announcements of ventriloquism or a faculty for prophecy but an unmistakable sign of an incapacity for love.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez , One Hundred Years of Solitude

“...he considered respect for one's given word as a wealth that should not be squandered.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Tired of that hermeneutical delirium, the workers turned away from the authorities in Macondo and brought their complaints up to the higher courts. It was there that the sleight-of-hand lawyers proved that the demands lacked all validity for the simple reason that the banana company did not have, never had had, and never would have any workers in its service because they were all hired on a temporary and occasional basis. So that the fable of the Virginia ham was nonsense, the same as that of the miraculous pills and the Yuletide toilets, and by a decision of the court it was established and set down in solemn decrees that the workers did not exist.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Open the windows and the doors, she shouted, cook some meat and fish, buy the largest turtles around, let strangers come in and spread their mats in the corners and urinate in the rose bushes and sit down to eat as many times as they want, and belch and rant and muddy everything with their boots, and let them do whatever they want to us, because that's the only way to drive off ruin.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“We have to bring in the railroad,' he said.
That was the first time the word had ever been heard in Macondo. Looking at the sketch that Aureliano Triste drew on the table and that was a direct descendant of the plans that Jose Arcadio Buendia had illustrated his project for solar warfare, Ursula confirmed her impression that time was going in a circle.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“He never looked better, nor had he been loved more, not had the breeding of his animals been wilder. There was a slaughtering of so many cows, pigs and chickens for the endless parties that the ground in the courtyard turned black and muddy with so much blood. It was an eternal execution of bones and innards, a mud pit of leftovers, and they had to keep exploding dynamite bombs all the time so that the buzzards would not pluck out the guests' eyes.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“تظاهرا بجهل ما يعرفانه كلاهما ، و ما يعرف كل منهما أن الآخر يعرفه”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude