Unamuno Quotes

Only he who attempts the absurd is capable of achieving the impossible.

At times to be silent is to lie. You will win because you have enough brute force. But you will not convince. For to convince you need to persuade. And in order to persuade you would need what you lack: Reason and Right

Life is doubt, And faith without doubt is nothing but death.

The less we read, the more harmful it is what we read.

We should try to be the parents of our future rather than the offspring of our past.

Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the God idea, not God Himself.

If a person never contradicts himself, it must be that he says nothing.

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

It is sad not to love, but it is much sadder not to be able to love.

My aim is to agitate and disturb people. I'm not selling bread; I'm selling yeast.

We live by revelation, as Christians, as artists, which means we must be careful never to get set into rigid molds. The minute we begin to think we know all the answers, we forget the questions, and we become smug like the Pharisee who listed all his considerable virtues, and thanked God that he was not like other men. Unamuno might be describing the artist as well as the Christian as he writes, "Those who believe they believe in God, but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God, and not in God himself.

That which the fascists hate, above all else, is intelligence.

Hasta que se llora de veras no se sabe si se tiene o no alma.

Man is said to be a reasoning animal. I do not know why he has not been defined as an affective or feeling animal. Perhaps that which differentiates him from other animals is feeling rather than reason. More often I have seen a cat reason than laugh or weep. Perhaps it weeps or laughs inwardly — but then perhaps, also inwardly, the crab resolves equations of the second degree.

Sometimes, to remain silent is to lie, since silence can be interpreted as assent.

Warmth, warmth, more warmth! For we are dying of cold and not darkness. It is not the night that kills, but the frost.

Piensa el sentimiento, siente el pensamiento." (roughly translated, "Think about the emotional and feel the intellectual")

Men shout to avoid listening to one another.

If it is nothingness that awaits us, let us make an injustice of it, let us fight against destiny, even without hope of victory.

We men do nothing but lie and make ourselves important. Speech was invented for the purpose of magnifying all of our sensations and impressions — perhaps so that we could believe in them.

And killing time is perhaps the essence of comedy, just as the essence of tragedy is killing eternity.

A lot of good arguments are spoiled by some fool who knows what they're talking about.

It is not usually our ideas that make us optimists or pessimists, but it is our optimism or pessimism that makes our ideas.

The skeptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches, as opposed to him who asserts and thinks that he has found.

Our life is a hope which is continually converting itself into memory and memory in its turn begets hope.

And usually [the philosopher] philosophizes either in order to resign himself to life, or to seek some finality in it, or to distract himself and forget his griefs, or for pastime and amusement.

The truth is that reason is the enemy of life.

No os quepais en el cerebro lo que os puede caber en el bolsillo. Y al contrario, ¡no os quepais en el bolsillo lo que os puede caber en el cerebro!

el que viaja mucho va huyendo de cada lugar que deja y no buscando cada lugar a que llega.

No, no es que me miró, es que me envolvió en su mirada; y no es que creí en Dios, sino que me creí un dios

Man is perishing. That may be, and if it is nothingness that awaits us let us so act that it will be an unjust fate.

Yo no vivía, y ahora vivo; pero ahora que vivo es cuando siento lo que es morir

A faith which does not doubt is a dead faith.

Hay quien se hunde en la lectura de novelas para distraerse de sí mismo, para olvidar sus penas...

And the secret of human life, the universal secret, the root secret from which all other secrets spring, is the longing for more life, the furious and insatiable desire to be everything else without ever ceasing to be ourselves, to take possession of the entire universe without letting the universe take possession of us and absorb us; it is the desire to be someone else without ceasing to be myself, and continue being myself at the same time I am someone else...

Miremos más que somos padres de nuestro porvenir que no hijos de nuestro pasado

El amor precede al conocimiento, y éste mata a aquél.

Cásate con la mujer que te quiera, aunque no la quieras tú. Es mejor casarte para que le conquisten a uno el amor que para conquistarlo.

Those faults we do not have, do not bother us.

Yes, yes, I see it all! — an enormous social activity, a mighty civilization, a profuseness of science, of art, of industry, of morality, and afterwords, when we have filled the world with industrial marvels, with great factories, with roads, museums and libraries, we shall fall exhausted at the foot of it all, and it will subsist — for whom? Was man made for science or was science made for man?

lo más liberador del arte es que le hace a uno dudar de que exista.

Uno mismo es quien menos sabe de su existencia... No se existe sino para los demás...

Leer, leer, leer; ¿seré lectura mañana también yo? ¿Seré mi creador, mi criatura, seré lo que pasó?

Sometimes to be silent is to lie.

Faith which does not doubt is dead faith. -Miguel de Unamuno, philosopher and writer (1864-1936)

¡Hay que vivir! Y él me enseñó a vivir, él nos enseñó a vivir, a sentir la vida, a sentir el sentido de la vida, a sumergirnos en el alma de la montaña, en el alma del lago, en el alma del pueblo de la aldea, a perdernos en ellas para quedar en ellas.

A pedant who beheld Solon weeping for the death of a son said to him, ‘Why do you weep thus, if weeping avails nothing?’ And the sage answered him, ‘Precisely for that reason—because it does not avail.

La verdad? La verdad [...] es acaso algo terrible, algo intolerable, algo mortal; la gente sencilla no podría vivir con ella.

A mí me sobra el cuerpo, Orfeo, me sobra el cuerpo porque me falta alma

Isolation is the worst possible counselor.

venceréis pero no convenceréis

The chiefest sanctity of a temple is that it is a place to which men go to weep in common.

- ¿Pero ahora se le ocurre comprar perro, señorito? - No lo he comprado, Domingo; este perro no es esclavo, sino que es libre; lo he encontrado. - Vamos, si, es expósito. - Todos somos expósitos, Domingo

Los vagos son ellos, los que dicen que trabajan y no hacen sino aturdirse y ahogar el pensamiento".

Las mujeres saben siempre cuándo se las mira, aun sin verlas, y cuándo se las ve sin mirarlas.

No hay más arte mnemotécnica que llevar un libro de memorias en el bolsillo. Ya lo decía mi inolvidable don Leoncio: ¡no metáis en la cabeza lo que os quepa en el bolsillo!

Dios, cuando no sabe qué hacer de nosotros, nos mata

«¿Por qué el diminutivo es señal de cariño? —iba diciéndose Augusto camino de su casa—. ¿Es acaso que el amor achica la cosa amada?

Sumido en la niebla de su vida

¿Religión verdadera? Todas las religiones son verdaderas en cuanto hacen vivir espiritualmente a los pueblos que las profesan, en cuanto les consuelan de haber tenido que nacer para morir, y para cada pueblo la religión más verdadera es la suya, la que le ha hecho. ¿Y la mía? La mía es consolarme en consolar a los demás, aunque el consuelo que les doy no sea el mío.

Consistent or inconsistent, no one is exempt from the mystery of the self. Probably we are all inconsistent. The world is just too complicated for a person to be able to afford the luxury of reconciling all of his beliefs with each other. Tension and confusion are important in a world where many decisions must be made quickly. Miguel de Unamuno once said, 'If a person never contradicts himself, it must be that he says nothing.' I would say that we all are in the same boast as the Zen master who, after contradicting himself several times in a row, said to the confused Doko, 'I cannot understand myself.'.

The vanity of the passing world and love are the two fundamental and heart-penetrating notes of true poetry. And they are two notes of which neither can be sounded without causing the other to vibrate. The feeling of the vanity of the passing world kindles love in us, the only thing that triumphs over the vain and transitory, the only thing that fills life again and eternalizes it.

Primero el amor, el conocimiento después.

أتعرف ما هو الجحيم؟ أتعرف أين هو الجحيم؟ - في منتصف السماء يقولون أو ربما في منتصف بطن عاقر.

Бъдете добри, това е достатъчно.

Me gusta esta costumbre de la rúbrica por lo inútil

El que tiene fe en si mismo no necesita que los demás crean en él

What we believe to be the motives of our conduct are usually just the pretexts for it.

Because Augustus was not a hiker, but a walker of life

Случайността е вътрешният ритъм на света.

Mira, eso del amor es una cosa de libros, algo que se ha inventado no más que para hablar y escribir de ello. Tonterías de poetas

La vida es una nebulosa.

¡Ay, Orfeo, Orfeo, esto de dormir solo, solo, solo, de dormir un solo sueño! El sueño de uno solo es la ilusión, la apariencia; el sueño de dos es ya la verdad, la realidad. ¿Qué es el mundo real sino el sueño que soñamos todos, el sueño común?

Eso de amor -decíase Ramiro ahora- sabe a libro; sólo en el teatro y en las novelas se oye el yo te amo; en la vida de la carne y sangre y hueso el entrañable ¡te quiero! y el más entrañable aún callárselo.

Beneath the current of our existence and within it, there is another current flowing in the opposite direction. In this life we go from yesterday to tomorrow, but there we go from tomorrow to yesterday. The web of life is being woven and unraveled at the same time. And from time to time we get breaths and vapors and even mysterious murmurs from that other world, from that interior of our own world. The inner heart of history is a counter-history; it is a process which inverts the course of history. The subterranean river flows from the sea and back to its source.

Consciousness (conscientia) is participated knowledge, is co-feeling, and co-feeling is com-passion. Love personalizes all that it loves. Only by personalizing it can we fall in love with an idea. And when love is so great and so vital, so strong and so overflowing, that it loves everything, then it personalizes everything and discovers that the total All, that the Universe, is also a person possessing a Consciousness, a Consciousness which in its turn suffers, pities, and loves, and therefore is consciousness. And this Consciousness of the Universe, which a love, personalizing all that it loves, discovers, is what we call God.

Too much sanity is madness. The greatest madness of all is to see the world as it is, and not as it should be.

El mundo es un caleidoscopio. La lógica la pone el hombre. El supremo arte es el del azar.

Las frases, cuanto más profundas, son más vacías. No hay profundidad mayor que la de un pozo sin fondo.

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

¡No metáis en la cabeza lo que os quepa en el bolsillo! ¡No metáis en el bolsillo lo que os quepa en la cabeza!" "No ye may thrust your head in what I fit in your pocket! No ye may thrust in his pocket that you fit on the head!" "Cebinize sığanı kafanıza sokmayın! Kafanıza sığanı cebinize tıkmayın!

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.

Дните идват и отминават, а любовта остава. Там вътре, в глъбините, в сърцевината на нещата, се докосват и срещат потокът на този свят и насрещният поток на другия свят. От този досег и от това съприкосновение се ражда най-тъжната и най-сладката от всички мъки - мъката да живееш.

There is no true love save in suffering, and in this world we have to choose either love, which is suffering, or happiness. And love leads us to no other happiness than that of love itself and its tragic consolation of uncertain hope. The moment love becomes happy and satisfied, it no longer desires and it is no longer love. The satisfied, the happy, do not love; they fall asleep in habit, near neighbor to annihilation. To fall into a habit is to begin to cease to be. We are the more—that is the more divine—the greater our capacity for suffering, or rather, for anguish.

Consistent or inconsistent, no one is exempt from the mystery of the self. Probably we are all inconsistent. Te world is just too complicated for a person to be able to afford the luxury of reconciling all of his beliefs with each other. Tension and confusion are important in a world where many decisions must be made quickly. Miguel de Unamuno once said, 'If a person never contradicts himself, it must be that he says nothing.' I would say that we all are in the same boast as the Zen master who, after contradicting himself several times in a row, said to the confused Doko, 'I cannot understand myself.

Los hombres no sucumbimos a las grandes penas ni a las grandes alegrías, y es porque esas penas y esas alegrías vienen embozadas en una inmensa niebla de pequeños incidentes. Y la vida es esto, la niebla. La vida es una nebulosa

- И това ако не е метафизика! - А какво е любовта, ако не метафизика? - Какво говориш? - Особено при теб. Защото в твоя случай цялата ти влюбеност е само церебрална, или както се казва, тя съществува само там вътре, в главата ти.

—No sea usted tan español, Don Miguel. —¡Y eso más, mentecato! ¡Pues sí, soy español. Español de nacimiento, de educación, de cuerpo, de espíritu, de lengua y hasta de profesión y oficio; español sobre todo y ante todo, y el españolismo es mi religión, y el cielo en que quiero creer es una España celestial y eterna, y mi Dios, un Dios español, el de Nuestro Señor don Quijote, un Dios que piensa en español y en español dijo: «¡Sea la luz!», y su verbo fue verbo español.

To say that everything is idea or that everything is spirit, is the same as saying that everything is matter or that everything is energy, for if everything is idea or spirit, just as my consciousness is, it is not plain why the diamond should not endure for ever, if my consciousness, because it is idea or spirit, endures forever.

„Да обичаш значи да изпитваш болка, и ако телата се свързват чрез насладата, душите се свързват чрез болката.

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?

Porque sua mulher vivia com o coração na mão e estendia este como oferta para o ar do mundo, entregue por completo ao momento presente, como vivem as rosas do campo e as rolas dos céus.

I agree with Pierre Bayle and with Unamuno that when cold reason contemplates the world it finds not only an absence of God, but good reasons for supposing that there is no God at all. From this perspective, from what Unamuno called the 'tragic sense of life', from this despair, faith comes to the rescue, not only as something nonrational but in a sense irrational. For Unamuno the great symbol of a person of faith was his Spanish hero Don Quixote. Faith is indeed quixotic. It is absurd. Let us admit it. Let us concede to everything! To a rational mind the world looks like a world without God. It looks like a world with no hope for another life. To think otherwise, to believe in spite of appearances, is surely a kind of madness. The atheist sees clearly that windmills are in fact only windmills, that Dulcinea is just a poor country bumpkin with a homely face and an unpleasant smell. The atheist is a Sarah, justifiably laughing in her old age at Abraham's belief that God will give them a son. What can be said in reply? How can a fideist admit that faith is a kind of madness, a dream fed by passionate desire, and yet maintain that one is not mad to make the leap?

And in touching your own nothingness, in not feeling your permanent base, in not reaching your own infinity, still less your own eternity, you will have a whole-hearted pity for yourself, and you will burn with a sorrowful love for yourself--a love that will consume your so-called self-love, which is merely a species of sensual self-delectation, the self-enjoyment, as it were, of the flesh of your soul.

And the supreme beauty is that of tragedy. The consciousness that everything passes away, that we ourselves pass away, and that everything that is ours and everything that environs us passes away, fills us with anguish, and this anguish itself reveals to us the consolation of that which does not pass away, of the eternal, of the beautiful.

Those who say they believe in God, and yet neither love nor fear him, do not in fact believe in Him but in those who have taught them that God exists. Those who believe that they believe in God but without any passion in their heart, any anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the God-idea, not in God.

The cure for suffering–which, as we have said, is the collision of consciousness with unconsciousness–is not to be submerged in unconsciousness, but to be raised to consciousness and to suffer more. The evil of suffering is cured by more suffering, by higher suffering. Do not take opium, but put salt and vinegar in the soul’s wound, for when you sleep and no longer feel the suffering, you are not. And to be, that is imperative. Do not then close your eyes to the agonizing Sphinx, but look her in the face and let her seize you in her mouth and crunch you with her hundred thousand poisonous teeth and swallow you. And when she has swallowed you, you will know the sweetness of the taste of suffering.

Creştinismul mă păstrează cu ceva tineresc în mine şi neplictisit, nedezamăgit, nescârbit, nesupărat. Prezenţei veşnic proaspete a lui Hristos îi datorez să nu dospesc şi fermentez în supărarea pe alţii şi pe mine. Acesta-i norocul meu, nefiresc, negândit: să-mi fie dat să cred în Dumnezeu şi în Hristos, cunoscând dealtfel ce a spus Unamuno: să crezi în Dumnezeu înseamnă să doreşti ca el să existe şi în plus să te porţi ca şi cum ar exista. Numai creştin fiind mă vizitează - în pofida oricărei raţiuni - fericirea, ciudat ghelir. Numai datorită creştinismului nu umblu - crispat, jignit, pe străzile diurne, nocturne ale oraşului - (...) - şi nu ajung să fiu şi eu - (...) - unul din acele cadavre pe care le poartă, vii, apa curgătoare a vieţii şi să nu mă număr printre cei ce încă n-au înţeles - (...) - că mai fericit este a da decât a lua.

Sí, sí, hay un aburrimiento inconsciente. Casi todos los hombres nos aburrimos inconscientemente. El aburrimiento es el fondo de la vida, y el aburrimiento es el que ha inventado los juegos, la distracciones, las novelas y el amor. La niebla de la vida rezuma un dulce aburrimiento, licor agridulce. Todos estos sucesos cotidianos, insignificantes; todas estas dulces conversaciones con que matamos el tiempo y alargamos la vida, ¿qué son sino dulcísimo abrurrirse? ¡ Oh Eugenia, mi Eugenia, flor de mi aburrimiento vital e inconsciente, asísteme en mis sueños, sueña en mí y conmigo!

Serenado um pouco, abriu o livro e retomou a leitura. Esqueceu-se de si próprio por completo e bem podia então dizer que morrera. Sonhava no outro, ou melhor, o outro era um sonho que nele se sonhava, uma criatura da sua infinita solidão. Até que despertou com uma terrível pontada no peito. A personagem do livro acabara de lhe dizer de novo: «Devo repetir ao leitor que comigo morrerá.». E desta vez o efeito foi espantoso. O trágico leitor perdeu o conhecimento naquele seu leito de sofrimento espiritual; deixou de sonhar no outro e deixou de sonhar-se a si mesmo. E quando voltou a si, lançou fora o livro, apagou a luz e procurou adormecer, deixar de sonhar. Impossível! De quando em quando tinha de levantar-se para beber água; ocorreu-lhe que bebia no Sena, no espelho. «Estarei louco? - repetia -. Certamente que não, porque quando uma pessoa se pergunta se está louca é porque não está...». Levantou-se, pegou-lhe o fogo na lareira e queimou o livro, voltando em seguida a deitar-se. E conseguiu finalmente adormecer.