Quotes from Jose Rizal

They come here seeking gold. May you go to their country seeking a different kind of gold for our needs! But remember, all that glisters is not gold.

You have believed that what crime and iniquity have defiled and deformed, another crime and another iniquity can purify and redeem. Wrong! Hate never produces anything but monsters and crime criminals! Love alone realizes wonderful works, virtue alone can save!

Well, ever since I have known you, morning and night have lost all their charms for me, and I find only the afternoon beautiful. Sometimes I think the morning was made only to prepare the day for the enjoyment of the delights of the afternoon, and the night only to dream and to enjoy the remembrance of feelings I never knew before.

Where are the youth who will consecrate their golden hours, their illusions, and their enthusiasm to the welfare of their native land? Where are the youth who will generously pour out their blood to wash away so much shame, so much crime, so much abomination?

Do you remember that night, that stormy night when you, seeing me alone and crying next to my mother's lifeless body, came toward me and put your hand on my shoulder, the hand that for so long you refused to let me hold, and said to me: 'You have lost your mother, I ever had one.' And you cried with me. [...] Could I ever forget you?

He just stared at the far-off horizon, slowly dissolving in the morning mist, toward the fields of Bagumbayan, toward the still sleeping sea.

Silence had blown its empty wind over Manila and everything seemed to sleep in the arms of nothingness.

he fell ill with a disease that only the grave can cure

The Government does not plan a better future; it is only an arm, the convent is the head. Because of the inertia with which it allows itself to be dragged from failure to failure, it becomes a shadow, loses its identity, and, weak and incapable, entrusts everything to selfish interest.

The people do not complain because they have no choice; they do not move because they are in a stupor; and you say that they do not suffer because you have not seen how their hearts bleed. But some day you will see and hear!

To fight alone against the world is not courage but foolhardiness. No one blames a pilot who takes refuge in port when the storm begins to blow. It is not cowardice to duck under a bullet; what is wrong is to defy it only to fall and never rise again.

The example of others can encourage those who only fear to begin.

Patent to your eyes is the sun of virtues - and I say sun, not moon, because there is no great merit in the moon shining at night; in the kingdom of the blind; the one-eyed man is king, and at night even a little star can shine; but what greater merit it is to shine in the middle of the day like the sun does.

Believing in chance is like believing in miracles. Both things must assume that God does not know the future. What is a chance? It is something that absolutely no one can foresee. What is a miracle? It is a contradiction, a subversion of the laws of Nature. Both contradiction and lack of foresight imply imperfection in the Intelligence that governs the machinery of the world.

I have had to believe much in God because I have stopped believing in men.

Sons must aspire to be greater than their fathers, but at our apron-strings we only teach them to be children.

She wanted to pray, but who prays in the hour of despair? Prayers are said in hope; otherwise the invocation to God becomes a reproach. So it was that in her heart she cried out and complained that this one man had been singled out to be cut off from the love of others, and asked why he was not denied sun and air and the sight of the skis, when one could live without these, but not without love.

She asks the dark to hide her That sunlight might not chide her As pride's pretentious daughter, And asks the dew to water Her lonely grave with tears

The youth is the hope of our future.

He who does not love his own language is worse than an animal and smelly fish.

It is a useless life that is not consecrated to a great ideal. It is like a stone wasted on the field without becoming a part of any edifice.

One only dies once, and if one does not die well, a good opportunity is lost and will not present itself again.

He who does not know how to look back at where he came from will never get to his destination.

Our liberty will not be secured at the sword's point... We must secure it by making ourselves worthy of it. And when the people reaches that height, God will provide a weapon, the idols will be shattered, tyranny will crumble like a house of cards, and liberty will shine out like the first dawn.