Phrases Spanish Quotes

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He agreed that I should buy another dictionary or, better yet, a phrase book with standard Spanish expressions. He also suggested that it would be a good idea if I learned to stammer, because people would get bored listening to me and would finish the sentence for me; this way my accent wouldn't be noticed.
Henri Charrière (Papillon)
The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return. To express that fundamental notion most Europeans can utilize a word derived from the Greek (nostalgia, nostalgie) as well as other words with roots in their national languages: añoranza, say the Spaniards; saudade, say the Portuguese. In each language these words have a different semantic nuance. Often they mean only the sadness caused by the impossibility of returning to one's country: a longing for country, for home. What in English is called "homesickness." Or in German: Heimweh. In Dutch: heimwee. But this reduces that great notion to just its spatial element. One of the oldest European languages, Icelandic (like English) makes a distinction between two terms: söknuour: nostalgia in its general sense; and heimprá: longing for the homeland. Czechs have the Greek-derived nostalgie as well as their own noun, stesk, and their own verb; the most moving, Czech expression of love: styska se mi po tobe ("I yearn for you," "I'm nostalgic for you"; "I cannot bear the pain of your absence"). In Spanish añoranza comes from the verb añorar (to feel nostalgia), which comes from the Catalan enyorar, itself derived from the Latin word ignorare (to be unaware of, not know, not experience; to lack or miss), In that etymological light nostalgia seems something like the pain of ignorance, of not knowing. You are far away, and I don't know what has become of you. My country is far away, and I don't know what is happening there. Certain languages have problems with nostalgia: the French can only express it by the noun from the Greek root, and have no verb for it; they can say Je m'ennuie de toi (I miss you), but the word s'ennuyer is weak, cold -- anyhow too light for so grave a feeling. The Germans rarely use the Greek-derived term Nostalgie, and tend to say Sehnsucht in speaking of the desire for an absent thing. But Sehnsucht can refer both to something that has existed and to something that has never existed (a new adventure), and therefore it does not necessarily imply the nostos idea; to include in Sehnsucht the obsession with returning would require adding a complementary phrase: Sehnsucht nach der Vergangenheit, nach der verlorenen Kindheit, nach der ersten Liebe (longing for the past, for lost childhood, for a first love).
Milan Kundera (Ignorance)
¿Cuál es el mejor estado del mundo?: Estar dos unidos. Translation. This phrase means: "What is the best state of the world?: Being together. " In this sentence, is a writer plays with the ambiguity of the Spanish language. The word "state" has different meanings in Spanish, plays on the double meaning, first, marital status, second, the state of a nation. The phrase "being two together" in Spanish "estar dos unidos," is very similar to the way in which the Spanish say USA.
Válgame (Zori 1ª Parte)
Bahala na," as the Filipinos say, which is an untranslatable phrase containing the same germ of philosophy as the Arabic "inshalla" or the Spanish "mañana" or the English "you must have me mixed up with somebody who gives a shit".
P.J. O'Rourke (Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks, "What's Funny about This?")
I take the paper and open it. There are three Spanish phrases, all written out in his messy handwriting. You are perfect, even in your imperfection. You are completely insufferable, and I can’t stop thinking about you. I want the real thing this time. “You wrote these down? So you could say them to me?” “Yes.” “If I kiss you, will it hurt?” I ask, moving closer to him. “What?” “Your ribs. If I kiss you, will I hurt you?” “No,” he says. “I don’t think so.” I put both of my hands on his face and kiss him. He reaches his good arm across my lower back and pulls me toward him. I’ve kissed him before, years ago. But this feels both familiar and brand-new, like a good stretch, like a deep breath. “I don’t know what this is,” I say. “I don’t know if it’s the real thing or not.” “I don’t care,” he says, kissing me again. He grabs at the hem of my T-shirt and the buttons on my jeans. “I don’t want to hurt you.” “I don’t care about that either,” he says, kissing me again. “You have to be careful,” I say. “Of your ribs.” “Carrie, please,” he says, kissing my neck. “Stop worrying.” And so I do.
Taylor Jenkins Reid (Carrie Soto Is Back)
He died, as the Spanish phrase has it, full of illusions. He had not had time in his life to lose any of them, nor even, at the end, to complete an act of contrition. He had not even had time to be disappointed in the Garbo picture which disappointed all Madrid for a week." (The Capital of the World)
Ernest Hemingway (The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War)
The boy Paco had never known about any of this nor about what all these people would be doing on the next day and on other days to come. He had no idea how they really lived nor how they ended. He did not even realize they ended. He died, as the Spanish phrase has it, full of illusions. He had not had time in his life to lose any of them, nor even, at the end, to complete an act of contrition. He had not even had time to be disappointed in the Garbo picture which disappointed all Madrid for a week.
Ernest Hemingway (The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway)
He'd ride sometimes clear to the upper end of the laguna before the horse would even stop trembling and he spoke constantly to it in Spanish in phrases almost biblical repeating again and again the strictures of a yet untabled law. Soy comandante de las yeguas, he would say, yo y yo sólo. Sin la caridad de estas manos no tengas nada. Ni comida ni agua ni hijos. Soy yo que traigo las yeguas de las montañas, las yeguas jóvenes, las yeguas salvajes y ardientes. While inside the vaulting of the ribs between his knees the darkly meated heart pumped of who's will and the blood pulsed and the bowels shifted in their massive blue convolutions of who's will and the stout thighbones and knee and cannon and the tendons like flaxen hawsers that drew and flexed and drew and flexed at their articulations of who's will all sheathed and muffled in the flesh and the hooves that stove wells in the morning groundmist and the head turning side to side and the great slavering keyboard of his teeth and the hot globes of his eyes where the world burned.
Cormac McCarthy (All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, #1))
He'd ride sometimes clear to the upper end of the laguna before the horse would even stop trembling and he spoke constantly to it in Spanish in phrases almost biblical repeating again and again the strictures of a yet untabled law. Soy comandante de las yeguas, he would say, yo y yo sólo. Sin la caridad de estas manos no tengas nada. Ni comida ni agua ni hijos. Soy yo que traigo las yeguas de las montañas, las yeguas jóvenes, las yeguas salvajes y ardientes. hile inside the vaulting of the ribs between his knees the darkly meated heart pumped of who's will and the blood pulsed and the bowels shifted in their massive blue convolutions of who's will and the stout thighbones and knee and cannon and the tendons like flaxen hawsers that drew and flexed and drew and flexed at their articulations of who's will all sheathed and muffled in the flesh and the hooves that stove wells in the morning groundmist and the head turning side to side and the great slavering keyboard of his teeth and the hot globes of his eyes where the world burned.
Cormac McCarthy (All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, #1))
In any event, should you doubt that your knowledge of Western history is distorted by the work of these distinguished bigots, consider whether you believe any of the following statements: The Catholic Church motivated and actively participated in nearly two millennia of anti-Semitic violence, justifying it on grounds that the Jews were responsible for the Crucifixion, until the Vatican II Council was shamed into retracting that doctrine in 1965. But, the Church still has not made amends for the fact that Pope Pius XII is rightfully known as “Hitler’s Pope.” Only recently have we become aware of remarkably enlightened Christian gospels, long ago suppressed by narrow-minded Catholic prelates. Once in power as the official church of Rome, Christians quickly and brutally persecuted paganism out of existence. The fall of Rome and the ascendancy of the Church precipitated Europe’s decline into a millennium of ignorance and backwardness. These Dark Ages lasted until the Renaissance/Enlightenment, when secular scholars burst through the centuries of Catholic barriers against reason. Initiated by the pope, the Crusades were but the first bloody chapter in the history of unprovoked and brutal European colonialism. The Spanish Inquisition tortured and murdered huge numbers of innocent people for “imaginary” crimes, such as witchcraft and blasphemy. The Catholic Church feared and persecuted scientists, as the case of Galileo makes clear. Therefore, the Scientific “Revolution” occurred mainly in Protestant societies because only there could the Catholic Church not suppress independent thought. ► Being entirely comfortable with slavery, the Catholic Church did nothing to oppose its introduction in the New World nor to make it more humane. Until very recently, the Catholic view of the ideal state was summed up in the phrase, “The divine right of kings.” Consequently, the Church has bitterly resisted all efforts to establish more liberal governments, eagerly supporting dictators. It was the Protestant Reformation that broke the repressive Catholic grip on progress and ushered in capitalism, religious freedom, and the modern world. Each of these statements is part of the common culture, widely accepted and frequently repeated. But, each is false and many are the exact opposite of the truth! A chapter will be devoted to summarizing recent repetitions of each of these statements and to demonstrating that each is most certainly false.
Rodney Stark (Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History)
Most languages have a word for the day before yesterday. Anteayer in Spanish. Vorgestern in German. There is no word for it in English. It’s a language that tries to keep the past simple and perfect, free of the subjunctive blurring of memory and mood. I take out a pen, tapping the end impatiently on a bar napkin as I try to think of a English word for “the day before yesterday.” I consider myself to be a political-linguistic refugee, come to Germany seeking asylum in a country where I don’t have to hear people say “nonplussed” when they mean “nonchalant” or have to listen to a military spokesperson euphemistically refer to a helicopter’s crashing into a mountainside as a “hard landing,” and I can’t begin to explain how liberating it is to live in a place where I can go through an autumn of Sundays without once having to hear someone say, “The only thing the prevent defense does is prevent you from winning.” Listening to America these days is like listening to the fallen King Lear using his royal gibberish to turn field mice and shadows into real enemies. America is always composing empty phrases like “keeping it real,” “intelligent design,” “hip-hop generation,” and “first responders” as a way to disguise the emptiness and the mundanity.
Paul Beatty (Slumberland)
This week we'll be learning about key elements of high quality picture books. Using the award winner lists in our course materials, select one picture book and share why it received its award. For example, Abuela is listed in the 100 Picture Books Everyone Should Know. According to Publishers Weekly, this is why it's so good: "In this tasty trip, Rosalba is "always going places" with her grandmother--abuela . During one of their bird-feeding outings to the park, Rosalba wonders aloud, "What if I could fly?" Thus begins an excursion through the girl's imagination as she soars high above the tall buildings and buses of Manhattan, over the docks and around the Statue of Liberty with Abuela in tow. Each stop of the glorious journey evokes a vivid memory for Rosalba's grandmother and reveals a new glimpse of the woman's colorful ethnic origins. Dorros's text seamlessly weaves Spanish words and phrases into the English narrative, retaining a dramatic quality rarely found in bilingual picture books. Rosalba's language is simple and melodic, suggesting the graceful images of flight found on each page. Kleven's ( Ernst ) mixed-media collages are vibrantly hued and intricately detailed, the various blended textures reminiscent of folk art forms. Those searching for solid multicultural material would be well advised to embark.
B.F. Skinner
The French language is one of the most widespread languages in terms of its presence around the world. It is the only language that can be found to be used commonly in every single continent. You may or may not be aware of the fact that French is derived from Latin, along with many other languages that it is similar to such as Spanish and Italian. If you already have some knowledge of Spanish or Italian, then learning French could be quite a breeze for you. Many languages change over time as different dialects and forms come into practice simply because of time passing and people changing. The interesting thing about the French language though is that there is a governing body whose main mission is to keep and protect the French language as close to its origin as possible in terms of word additions and changes to things like grammar or sentence structure. There are many changes proposed and rejected by this governing body in an effort to maintain its integrity to the past. This is different from the English language as many new words are being added to the dictionary all the time as societies grow, change and develop. The French language and its prominence are growing rapidly as many of the countries where French is a primary language are developing countries and thus they are growing and changing. What this means for the French language is that it is also growing and becoming more widespread as these countries develop.
Paul Bonnet (FRENCH COMPLETE COURSE: 3 BOOKS IN 1 : The Best Guide for Beginners to Learn and Speak French Language Fast and Easy with Vocabulary and Grammar, Common Phrases and Short Stories)
The picture of human life in the market-place, though its general tint was the sad gray, brown, or black of the English emigrants, was yet enlivened by some diversity of hue. A party of Indians—in their savage finery of curiously embroidered deerskin robes, wampum-belts, red and yellow ochre, and feathers, and armed with the bow and arrow and stone-headed spear—stood apart with countenances of inflexible gravity, beyond what even the Puritan aspect could attain. Nor, wild as were these painted barbarians, were they the wildest feature of the scene. This distinction could more justly be claimed by some mariners—a part of the crew of the vessel from the Spanish Main—who had come ashore to see the humours of Election Day. They were rough-looking desperadoes, with sun-blackened faces, and an immensity of beard; their wide short trousers were confined about the waist by belts, often clasped with a rough plate of gold, and sustaining always a long knife, and in some instances, a sword. From beneath their broad-brimmed hats of palm-leaf, gleamed eyes which, even in good-nature and merriment, had a kind of animal ferocity. They transgressed without fear or scruple, the rules of behaviour that were binding on all others: smoking tobacco under the beadle's very nose, although each whiff would have cost a townsman a shilling; and quaffing at their pleasure, draughts of wine or aqua-vitae from pocket flasks, which they freely tendered to the gaping crowd around them. It remarkably characterised the incomplete morality of the age, rigid as we call it, that a licence was allowed the seafaring class, not merely for their freaks on shore, but for far more desperate deeds on their proper element. The sailor of that day would go near to be arraigned as a pirate in our own. There could be little doubt, for instance, that this very ship's crew, though no unfavourable specimens of the nautical brotherhood, had been guilty, as we should phrase it, of depredations on the Spanish commerce, such as would have perilled all their necks in a modern court of justice. But the sea in those old times heaved, swelled, and foamed very much at its own will, or subject only to the tempestuous wind, with hardly any attempts at regulation by human law. The buccaneer on the wave might relinquish his calling and become at once if he chose, a man of probity and piety on land; nor, even in the full career of his reckless life, was he regarded as a personage with whom it was disreputable to traffic or casually associate. Thus the Puritan elders in their black cloaks, starched bands, and steeple-crowned hats, smiled not unbenignantly at the clamour and rude deportment of these jolly seafaring men; and it excited neither surprise nor animadversion when so reputable a citizen as old Roger Chillingworth, the physician, was seen to enter the market-place in close and familiar talk with the commander of the questionable vessel.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter)
Isabel.
J.G. Jimenez (Spanish: Learn Basic Spanish Fast: Learn Beginner Spanish Phrases and Vocabulary in 7 Days!)
Rodrigues
J.G. Jimenez (Spanish: Learn Basic Spanish Fast: Learn Beginner Spanish Phrases and Vocabulary in 7 Days!)
Saturday
J.G. Jimenez (Spanish: Learn Basic Spanish Fast: Learn Beginner Spanish Phrases and Vocabulary in 7 Days!)
enero
J.G. Jimenez (Spanish: Learn Basic Spanish Fast: Learn Beginner Spanish Phrases and Vocabulary in 7 Days!)
nueve/nine
J.G. Jimenez (Spanish: Learn Basic Spanish Fast: Learn Beginner Spanish Phrases and Vocabulary in 7 Days!)
As a rule of thumb, if a verb or phrase is about wishes, emotions, doubt, denial, recommendations, knowledge and understanding, then there's a strong possibility the Subjunctive will follow.
Linda Plummer (Conquer 918 Spanish Verbs: Your Simple 7 Step System To Learning Spanish Verb Tenses (learn Spanish, Spanish flash cards))
By this clear and honest phrase, I understand Unamuno to mean that life is not, nor ever has been, a straight line forward. According to him, life is characterized much more by exception and disorder than by total or perfect order. Life, as the biblical tradition makes clear, is both loss and renewal, death and resurrection, chaos and healing at the same time; life seems to be a collision of opposites. Unamuno equates the notion of faith with trust in an underlying life force so strong that it even includes death. Faith also includes reason, but is a larger category than reason for Unamuno. Truth is not always about pragmatic problem solving and making things “work,” but about reconciling contradictions. Just because something might have some dire effects does not mean it is not true or even good. Just because something pleases people does not make it true either. Life is inherently tragic, and that is the truth that only faith, but not our seeming logic, can accept. This is my amateur and very partial summary of the thought of this great Spanish philosopher.
Richard Rohr (Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life)
I’M SITTING at the counter in my favorite New York diner, tucking into eggs over easy with hash browns—very English, the breakfast fry-up, but very American, too. I’m washing it down with cranberry juice—caffeine is probably the only vice I don’t have—and someone turns on the radio. Most of the time, I don’t hear music. My brain just tunes it out. We’re all bombarded with some sort of music on a daily basis—in shops, TV commercials, restaurants, lifts—most of it simply noise pollution, deadening us to the real joy of music. So I only listen when I really want to. But the Puerto Rican waitress has turned on a Spanish channel, and a seductive salsa rhythm seeps into the room. It’s a charanga band—a traditional group that uses flute and violin over the standard latin rhythm section of congas, bongos, and timbales—and now I’m half-listening. Then the violinist takes a solo, and I’m hooked. He’s a great, inspired player. The band is playing a simple three-chord vamp, and he follows the chords closely, and yet still manages to come up with witty, ingenious, melodic twists. And the way he plays with the time! Dragging a phrase, and then ending it right on the beat. Setting up syncopations—accents that go against the beat—and then turning them around, playing them backwards. Then he hits an unexpected high note, and it’s like a shaft of light going right through my body, filling me with warmth. Without even thinking, I cry out—“Yeah!” or “All right!” or something—and I marvel at the way that music, after all these years, can still surprise me. The guy next to me just goes on munching his cheeseburger. But something special has happened, even if I’m the only one who knows it. The band on the radio are most likely second- or third-generation Puerto Ricans who were raised uptown, way uptown—in the Bronx—in a different world from me. But through the music, they’ve connected with an Englishman way downtown, in a way that would otherwise never happen.
Joe Jackson (A Cure For Gravity: A Musical Pilgrimage)
Another, much more famous, instance of morphologization has occurred in the Romance languages (the modern descendants of Latin). Latin had a noun mens ‘mind’, whose stem was ment- and whose ablative case-form was mente (the Latin ablative was a case-form with miscellaneous uses, most of which we would associate largely with prepositional use in English). Quite early, it became usual in Latin to use the ablative mente with an accompanying adjective to express the state of mind in which an action was performed; as was usual in Latin, the adjective had to agree with its noun mente as feminine singular ablative. We thus find phrases like devota mente ‘with a devout mind’ (i.e., ‘devoutly’) and clara mente ‘with a clear mind’ (i.e., ‘clear-headedly’). At this stage, however, the construction was possible only with adjectives denoting possible states of mind; other adjectives, like those meaning ‘new’ or ‘equal’ or ‘obvious’, could not appear with mente, because the result would have made no sense: something like ‘with an equal mind’ could hardly mean anything. But then speakers began to reinterpret the mente construction as describing not the state of mind of somebody doing something, but the manner in which it was done. Consequently, the construction was extended to a much larger range of adjectives, and new instances appeared, like lenta mente (lenta ‘slow’) and dulce mente (dulce ‘soft’), with the adjectives still in the appropriate grammatical form for agreement with the noun. As a result, the form mente was no longer regarded as a form of mens ‘mind’; it was taken instead as a purely grammatical marker expressing an adverbial function, and it was therefore reduced from a separate word to a suffix. Today this new suffix is the ordinary way of obtaining adverbs of manner in the Romance languages, entirely parallel to English -ly in slowly or carefully, and it can be added to almost any suitable adjective. Thus Spanish, for example, has igualmente ‘equally’ (igual ‘equal’) and absolutamente ‘absolutely’ (absoluta ‘absolute’). Spanish still retains a trace of the ancient pattern: when two such adverbs are conjoined, only the last takes the suffix, and hence Spaniards say lenta y seguramente ‘slowly and surely’, and not *lentamente y seguramente. In French, this is not possible, and a French-speaker must say lentement et sûrement.
Robert McColl Millar (Trask's Historical Linguistics)
learning a second language is like taking your daily vitamins and eating well, for your brain!
Learn Like a Native (Spanish Short Stories for Beginners Book 1: Over 100 Dialogues and Daily Used Phrases to Learn Spanish in Your Car. Have Fun & Grow Your Vocabulary, with ... Language Learning Lessons (Spanish Edition))
Spanish word sendereando, for hiking, is compact and pretty (sendero is path), but the wisest phrase for this activity is the Latin solvitur ambulando (“it is solved by walking”), attributed to Saint Augustine. The phrase was mentioned by the long-distance walker Patrick Leigh-Fermor to Bruce Chatwin. “Hearing it, immediately Bruce whipped out his notebook,” Chatwin’s biographer wrote. Walking to ease the mind is also an objective of the pilgrim. There is a spiritual dimension too: the walk itself is part of a process of purification. Walking is the age-old form of travel, the most fundamental, perhaps the most revealing.
Paul Theroux (The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road)
La vida es una buena aventura,” I say, pleased with myself. I have picked up several Spanish phrases and this is one of them. “What does that mean?” Bitsy asks. “It means that life is a good adventure.
Judy Blume (Tiger Eyes)
He didn't want to hear Cade's fury. He wasn't ready yet for whatever Cade would decide. Travis had been on his own since he was fifteen. Lily and their son and Juanita were as close as he had ever come to family since then. Even the little brat, Serena, had carved a place in his heart. He wasn't made like Cade. He longed for the warmth of human emotion. He even missed that old rascal Ephraim. He didn't care about the damned land or the cattle or whatever else it was that drove men to fight. Travis required Juanita's shy adoration, Roy's admiring phrases, Lily's rare laughter. Ricardo could have the damned hacienda. Travis wanted the women and children. He was afraid Cade wouldn't think the same. These past weeks had made it obvious that Cade had a single-minded fascination with the Spanish family and the hacienda he had been denied all these years. When he was coherent, he had spoken of the changes he would make, the plans he had for that mesquite-studded acreage. When he was fevered, he had cursed Ricardo, cursed every obstacle that had ever stood in his way, and sworn oaths that made Travis shiver. Behind that stoic facade lay a lifetime of hate and longing. He didn't want to think about the decision that Cade had to make now. Lily and her small farm had only been an afterthought in that lifetime. When
Patricia Rice (Texas Lily (Too Hard to Handle, #1))
New Yorkers and Texans get along so well. They have those same outsize personalities, that determination and passion, that “don’t mess with me” quality. And they have the same law my maternal grandmother would tell me from the time I was a little boy: “If it is to be, it is up to me.” Self-reliance, confidence. I really believe those lyrics, “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere.” In Texas, we have something we call “the Cortez moment,” which refers to when the great Spanish explorer and conquistador of Mexico came and set up camp and then burned his boats. The phrase “burn the boats” means there’s nothing but forward, onward, no turning back or running home scared. It’s a motto for New York as much as for Texas. When you move here, if you’re any good at all, you burn the boats. (from My First New York)
Dan Rather
Once the solar years blended into my rhythmic patterns on stone and critical screens, millions telling me the same old twisted scenes, glimmering glances of delight disguised as silver lining pause and model frames. Be very careful which universe you dwell in from now on, for even my own territory is casted within many phrases gone into the cracks where smoke can't escape, many have slit their tongues and throats for a splash of Spanish haze, and lost thick jungle heat only chest and breath could ever match in mid sonic reframe of resonance imagined in west coast hues scanning my pupils to yours, at once and foreseen many summer moons ago when the unknown was merely an oasis of water falling from heavenly thrones, getting off on this planet; getting off on your tones in phantom cosmic zones.
Brandon Villasenor (Prima Materia (Radiance Hotter than Shade, #1))
To borrow and adapt the Spanish philosopherpoet George Santayana’s famous phrase, it is likely only the dead have seen the last of submarine warfare.4 Humanity will have to put its faith in ‘the better angels’. The submarine, for good or ill, seems destined to play a major part in world events, and indeed its activities could yet decide the fate of all humanity.
Iain Ballantyne (The Deadly Deep: The Definitive History of Submarine Warfare)
That phrase,” he said, looking surprised. “Even I know that phrase. ‘Star-crossed lovers.’ They’re doing Romeo and Juliet in there. The original Romeo and Juliet.” “No, the original had Saunder Cooke as Juliet,” I said. “That was much better than whoever’s doing it since Saunder grew a beard. Anyhow it’s a shite play, just a stupid court-sponsored rant against the Irish.” I grabbed his arm and began to pull him through the floods of people streaming back into the theatre. We must need get around to the back of the stage where the tiring-house was. “How is it anti-Irish?” Tristan asked. “The villain is a Catholic friar,” I pointed out. “He being a meddling busy-body who traffics in poison—he’s the reason it’s a tragedy and not a comedy, and everyone knows Catholic is code for Irish.” “Aren’t the French Catholic?” asked Tristan. “And the Spanish?” “The friar’s name is Lawrence,” I countered, as I pulled him along. “So obviously named after St. Labhrás.
Neal Stephenson (The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. (D.O.D.O. #1))
anything
Sergio Rodríguez (Spanish Language Lessons: Your Essential Spanish Phrase Book for Traveling in Spain, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Mexico with Ease! (Your Spanish place! 3))
Most of my Spanish vocabulary consists of phrases like I didn’t know that car was stolen, or I was home watching TV during the shooting, or That’s not blood, it’s molé sauce.
Jordan Castillo Price (Spook Squad (PsyCop, #7))
As I age, I find myself increasingly thankful for the prospect of departure from this world, not out of despair, but from a growing detachment from a society that seems to be losing its grip on intelligence and civility. The language we use, the expressions we adopt, are becoming less about communication and more about shock or insult. It's disheartening to see phrases, even in languages like Spanish, used not for their intended meaning but as veiled slurs. I've always detested the casual use of profanity or insults cloaked as wit, especially those that mock or demean. I once thought to change the world around me, to elevate discourse, but now I understand the wisdom in changing oneself instead. Perhaps the true escape is not just to another place, but to a different state of being, where such noise is but a distant echo.
Yvonne Padmos