Quotes from Jose Rizal

In the Philippines, however, well removed from Spain, the friars continued their domination of both secular and religious life. This long-term influence was more political than cultural or linguistic, but in the strictest sense secular power in the colony was subordinate, and the effect of such control was that civil government was subordinated to a "friarocracy.

Malungkot at naninimdim ang dukhà. Sa gabing iyon, kung bahagya mang nagdasal ay nanalangin namang labis, nagdurusa ang mga mata't lumuluha ang puso. Wala siyang mga nobena, hindi alam ang mga jaculatoria, ni ang mga berso, ni ang mga oremus na kinatha ng mga fraile upang gamitin ng mga walang sariling isip ni sariling damdamin.

Youth is lazy. What galvanizes it is our opposition.

de qué sirve la vida si no se tiene seguridad en el hogar, fe en la justicia, y confianza en la tranquilidad de la conciencia?

Patriotism can only be a crime in a tyrannical people, because then it is rapine under a beautiful name, but however perfect humanity may become, patriotism will always be a virtue among oppressed peoples, because it will at all times mean love of justice, of liberty, of personal dignity—nothing of chimerical dreams, of effeminate idyls!

Meanwhile, they who were so carelessly disposing of people's fates, he who commanded the legal murders, he who violated justice and made use of the law to maintain himself by force, slept in peace.

I assumed you knew . . . but you must be brave. In the Philippines you are not considered to be honorable unless you have been to jail.

The people believe that those who do not think as they do are fools. For that reason, they take me for such, and I am grateful, because woe is me! The day the would wish to give me back my sanity, that day they'll deprive me of the little liberty that I have bought at the cost of my reputation as a rational being. And who knows if they are right? I neither think nor live according to their laws; my principles, my ideals are different.

To fall with the head high and the brow serene is not to fall. It is to triumph. The sad thing is to fall with the stain of dishonor.

Batid ni Kapitan Tiago na maraming santo sa kalendaryo na walang ginagawa, at marahil wala ring ginagawa roon sa langit.

Walang maitutugon ang wika sa tanong ng pag-ibig buhat sa isang sulyap na kumikislap o palihim. Sa halip, sumasagot ang ngiti, ang halik, o ang buntonghininga.

And you, your religion created for a suffering multitude, have you forgotten your mission of consoling the oppressed in their misery, and humbling the hubris of power, and now render promises only to the rich, those who can pay?

Huwag mong kalimutan na kahit pamana sa sangkatauhan ang karunungan, walang nagtatamo nito kundi ang may puso.

it's not criminals who provoke great hatred, it's honest men

there are more profound truths than one finds in history

Take this example: if I have killed the father of a family, if I have made of a woman a sorrowing widow and destitute orphans of some happy children, have I satisfied eternal Justice by letting myself be hanged, or by entrusting my secret to one who is obliged to guard it for me, or by giving alms to priests who are least in need of them, or by buying indulgences and lamenting night and day? What of the widow and the orphans?

People believe that madness is when you don't think as they do

One might have said that God was writing his name with fire

But the poor and the indigent, who scarcely made enough money to keep body and soul together, and had to bribe petty bureaucrats, clerks, and guards to let them alone, did not sleep in the peace which romantic poets ascribe to them; perhaps such poets have never been poor.

I honour the father for the merit of his son, but I don't honour the son because of the father. Let everyone be rewarded or punished because of what he himself does, not what others do.

There lies the river, a monstrous glass serpent asleep in a green carpet

She was attractive because she was young, because she had nice eyes, a pretty nose, and a small mouth, and because her features were harmonious and enlivened by a sweet expression; but she was not a beauty to strike the eye at first glance; she was like a flower in the fields, pale and without noticeable fragrance, which is carelessly stepped underfoot, and whose beauty can be appreciated only after a careful examination, one of those nameless flowers of almost imperceptible perfume.

My... I'm not going to read that because it's only a lie

Never forget that if wisdom is the patrimony of mankind, only those of great heart will inherit it,