Quotes About Legacy

But the streets still revealed, along with the progress and future greatness, some remnants of the recent past, of the time of bandits and bloodshed.

El maldito Bonaparte la embarró al mejor tiempo: expiró su imperio y nos dejó en los cuernos del toro».

Los monumentos, hay que admitirlo, son piedras que cuestan una fortuna y que se olvidarían si no fuera porque estorban el tránsito.

I think nowadays, while literary men seem to have neglected their epic duties, the epic has been saved for us, strangely enough, by the Westerns.

The fact is that all writers create their precursors. Their work modifies our conception of the past, just as it is bound to modify the future.

Every writer creates his own precursors.

In all the world, one man has been born, one man has died.

When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation." [As attributed by Alastair Reid in Neruda and Borges , The New Yorker, June 24, 1996; as well as in The Talk of the Town , The New Yorker, July 7, 1986]

A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.

Nuestras vidas son los ríos que van a dar en la mar, que es el morir; allí van los señoríos derechos a se acabar y consumir; allí los ríos caudales, allí los otros medianos y más chicos, y llegados, son iguales los que viven por sus manos y los ricos

What madness to beget children!

Nuestro proyecto tiene una meta que sobrepasa la historia.

Vieja estaría pero se iba a morir cantando y con las plumas puestas.

A glória dos netos nada tem a ganhar com a ruína dos avós.

La desgracia tiene hijos aunque ella no tiene madre

La vida vale por el uso que de ella hacemos, por las obras que realizamos. No ha vivido más el que cuenta más años, sino el que ha sentido mejor un ideal; las canas denuncian la vejez, pero no dicen cuánta juventud la precedió.

A revolution only lasts fifteen years, a period which coincides with the effectiveness of a generation.

I die without seeing dawn's light shining on my country... You, who will see it, welcome it for me...don't forget those who fell during the nighttime.

Why independence, if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow?

Kapag may mga uban na po akong tulad ng sa inyo at ginugunita ang nakaraan at makita kong gumawa ako alang-alang sa sarili lamang, hindi ginhawa ang magagawa't nararapat gawin ukol sa bayang nagbigay sa akin ng lahat, ukol sa mga mamamayang tumutulong sa aking mabuhay, kapag nagkagayon po, magiging tinik sa akin ang bawat uban, at sa halip na ikaliwalhati ko'y dapat kong ikahiya.

I fear for my books.

Ang mga henyong ipinapalagay ng mga karaniwang tao na nauna sa kanilang panahon ay nagmistulang gayon sapagkat tinatanaw ng mga humahatol mula sa malayo o napagkakamalang isang buong siglo ang buntot na tinatahak ng mga naiwanan.

Would that I could die, reduce myself to nothing, leave a glorious name to my country, die in the cause of defending it against a foreign invasion and afterwards the sun will shine on my body like a permanent sentinel in these ocean rocks!

I am not writing for this generation but for those yet to come. If this one could read what I have written, it would burn my books, my whole life's work. But the generation that deciphers these characters will be a learned generation; it will understand me and say: "Not everyone slept during the night of our forefathers!