Quotes from Miguel de Unamuno

I cannot imagine how anyone can go through life without carrying the memories of his childhood on the surface of his soul.

Memory is the basis of individual personality, just as tradition is the basis of the collective personality of a people. We live in memory and by memory, and our spiritual life is at bottom simply the effort of our memory to persist, to transform itself into hope, the effort of our past to transform itself into our future.

Não tenho medo das palavras, mas calo-me.

El amor es un éxtasis;nos saca de nosotros mismos

El que crea se crea y el que se crea se muere.

Quando um homem adormecido e inerte na cama sonha algo, o que é que existe mais, ele como consciência que sonha, ou o seu sonho?

Sólo a solas se sentía él; sólo a solas podía decirse a sí mismo, tal vez para convencerse, ¡yo soy yo!; ante los demás, metido en la muchedumbre atareada o distraída, no se sentía a sí mismo.

Toda ley es una ley de ritmo, y el ritmo es el amor.

Casi el único valor de las grandes obras maestras del ingenio humano consiste en haber provocado un libro de crítica o de comentario.

La envidia —gustaba repetir— la mantienen los que se empeñan en creerse envidiados, y las más de las persecuciones son efecto más de la manía persecutoria que no de la perseguidora.

Conocer es perdonar, dicen. No, perdonar es conocer. Primero el amor, el conocimiento después.

Es una desgracia esto de tener que servirse uno de las cosas —pensó Augusto—; tener que usarlas, el use estropea y hasta destruye toda belleza. La función más noble de los objetos es la de ser contemplados. ¡Qué bella es una naranja antes de comida!

Only by himself could he feel himself, only by himself he could tell himself 'I am me'. Before others, among the busy and distracted crowd, he didn't feel himself. Almost every man lives subconsciously in boredom. Boredom is the pit of life, it was boredom that invented games, distractions, romances and love.

One night there lowered into my mind one of those dark, sad, and mournful dreams which I cannot banish from my thoughts.. I dreamed that I was married, that I had a child, that this child died, and that over its body…I said to my wife: "Behold our love! Shortly it will decay: this is the way everything ends.

Quien conozca una, una sola bien, las conoce todas, conoce a la Mujer. Además, ya sabe usted que todo lo que se gana en extensión se pierde en intensidad.

La caridad encubre todos los pecados», decía san Pedro.

Todas las religiones son verdaderas en cuanto hacen vivir espiritualmente a los pueblos que las profesan

The truth is that my work — I was going to say my mission — is to shatter the faith of men here, there, and everywhere, faith in affirmation, faith in negation, and faith in abstention in faith, and this for the sake of faith in faith itself; it is to war against all those who submit, whether it be to Catholicism, or to rationalism, or to agnosticism; it is to make all men live the life of inquietude and passionate desire.

Y qué es el amor? ¿Quién definió el amor? Amor definido deja de serlo...

Obermann: «Para el Universo, nada; para mí, todo»;

Naturalmente; hay lágrimas que refrescan y desahogan y lágrimas que encienden y sofocan más.

The greatest height of heroism to which an individual can attain is to know how to face ridicule; better still, to know how to make oneself ridiculous and not to shrink from the ridicule.

A lot of good arguments are spoiled by some fool who knows what he is talking about.

I am a man; no other man do I deem a stranger.