Quotes from Jose Marti

He who uses the office he owes to the voters wrongfully and against them is a thief.

The force of passion is balanced by the force of interest.

Perhaps the enemies of liberty are such only because they judge it by its loud voice.

But love, like the sun that it is, sets afire and melts everything. what greed and privilege to build up over whole centuries the indignation of a pious spirit, with its natural following of oppressed souls, will cast down with a single shove.

Man needs to go outside himself in order to find repose and reveal himself.

In truth, men speak too much of danger.

Mountains culminate in peaks, and nations in men.

Man is a living duty, a depository of powers that he must not leave in a brute state. Man is a wing.

He who receives money in trust to administer for the benefit of its owner, and uses it either for his own interest or against the wishes of its rightful owner, is a thief.

All is beautiful and unceasing, all is music and reason, and all, like diamond, is carbon first, then light.

Nature has placed the need to see justice done in some souls, and the need to flout and affront it in others.

Happiness exists on earth, and it is won through prudent exercise of reason, knowledge of the harmony of the universe, and constant practice of generosity.

My poems are like a dagger Sprouting flowers from the hilt; My poetry is like a fountain Sprinkling streams of coral water.

Terrible times in which priests no longer merit the praise of poets and in which poets have not yet begun to be priests.

To change masters is not to be free.

The first duty of a man is to think for himself

The struggles waged by nations are weak only when they lack support in the hearts of their women.

We are free, but not to be evil, not to be indifferent to human suffering, not to profit from the people, from the work created and sustained through their spirit of political association, while refusing to contribute to the political state that we profit from.

Culture, which makes talent shine, is not completely ours either, nor can we place it solely at our disposal. Rather, it belongs mainly to our country, which gave it to us, and to humanity, from which we receive it as a birthright.

A knowledge of different literatures is the best way to free one's self from the tyranny of any of them.

Talent is a gift that brings with it an obligation to serve the world, and not ourselves, for it is not of our making.

Like bones to the human body, the axle to the wheel, the wing to the bird, and the air to the wing, so is liberty the essence of life. Whatever is done without it is imperfect.

If I survive, I will spend my whole life at the oven door seeing that no one is denied bread and, so as to give a lesson of charity, especially those who did not bring flour.

One just principle from the depths of a cave is more powerful than an army.