xy

@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023

Favourite quotes (21448)

“Cuba came from a dictatorship, and I arrived at the presidency after being senator for 25 years.”

Salvador Allende (1908–1973) Chilean physician and politician

Interview with Saul Landau (1971)
Context: I have been to Cuba many times. I have spoken many times with Fidel Castro and got to know Commander Ernesto Guevara well enough. I know Cuba's leaders and their struggle. It has been difficult to overcome the blockade. But the reality in Cuba is very different from that in Chile. Cuba came from a dictatorship, and I arrived at the presidency after being senator for 25 years.

“For you to be a Communist or a Socialist is to be totalitarian; for me no.… On the contrary, I think Socialism frees man.”

Salvador Allende (1908–1973) Chilean physician and politician

Quoted in "Allende Sees Chile Finding Her Own Way to Socialism" by Joseph Novitski, in The New York Times (4 October 1970)
Context: We start from different ideological positions. For you to be a Communist or a Socialist is to be totalitarian; for me no.… On the contrary, I think Socialism frees man.

“As for the bourgeois state, at the present moment, we are seeking to overcome it, to overthrow it.… Our objective is total, scientific, Marxist socialism.”

Salvador Allende (1908–1973) Chilean physician and politician

As quoted in Conversations With Allende (1970) by Regis Debray

“Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny.”

Salvador Allende (1908–1973) Chilean physician and politician

Final address (1973)
Context: The people must defend themselves, but they must not sacrifice themselves. The people must not let themselves be destroyed or riddled with bullets, but they cannot be humiliated either.
Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment when treason seeks to prevail. Keep in mind that, much sooner than later, great avenues will again be opened, through which will pass the free man, to construct a better society.
Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!
These are my last words, and I am certain that my sacrifice will not be in vain, I am certain that, at the very least, it will be a moral lesson that will punish felony, cowardice, and treason.

“The people must defend themselves, but they must not sacrifice themselves.”

Salvador Allende (1908–1973) Chilean physician and politician

“The apartments of the rich are cabinets of curiosities: a conglomeration of classical antiquity, gothic, renaissance; Louis XIII… Something from every century but our own, a predicament that has arisen in no other period… so that we seem to be subsisting on the ruins of the past, as if the end of the world were near.”

Alfred de Musset (1810–1857) French writer

This quotation is useful for explanations of the period of art nouveau, and the causes of the art movement.
Confession d'un Enfant du Siécle (1836)(translation)

“I can't help it, the idea of the infinite torments me.”

Alfred de Musset (1810–1857) French writer

Je ne puis;—malgré moi l'infini me tourmente. <br class="br"> L'Espoir en Dieu http://books.google.com/books?id=AyxCAAAAcAAJ&q=%22Malgr%C3%A9+moi+l'infini+me+tourmente%22&pg=PA522#v=onepage, Revue des deux Mondes (1838).

“So from my chastened soul beneath thy ray
Old love is born anew.”

Alfred de Musset (1810–1857) French writer

Remembrance.
Context: As all the perfumes of the vanished day
Rise from the earth still moistened with the dew
So from my chastened soul beneath thy ray
Old love is born anew.

“Great artists have no country.”

Alfred de Musset Lorenzaccio

L’Orfèvre, Lorenzaccio (1834).

“And without music there can be no perfect knowledge, for there is nothing without it. For even the universe itself is said to have been put together with a certain harmony of sounds, and the very heavens revolve under the guidance of harmony.”
Itaque sine Musica nulla disciplina potest esse perfecta, nihil enim sine illa. Nam et ipse mundus quadam harmonia sonorum fertur esse conpositus, et coelum ipsud sub harmoniae modulatione revolvi.

Isidore of Seville book Etymologiae

Bk. 3, ch. 17, sect. 1; p. 137.
Etymologiae

“Many creatures go through a natural change and by decay pass into different forms, as bees [are formed] by the decaying flesh of calves, as beetles from horses, locusts from mules, scorpions from crabs.”
Siquidem et per naturam pleraque mutationem recipiunt, et corrupta in diversas species transformantur; sicut de vitulorum carnibus putridis apes, sicut de equis scarabei, de mulis locustae, de cancris scorpiones.

Isidore of Seville book Etymologiae

Bk. 11, ch. 4, sect. 3; p. 221.
Etymologiae

“Letters are signs of things, symbols of words, whose power is so great that without a voice they speak to us the words of the absent; for they introduce words by the eye, not by the ear.”
Litterae autem sunt indices rerum, signa verborum, quibus tanta vis est, ut nobis dicta absentium sine voce loquantur. Verba enim per oculos non per aures introducunt.

Isidore of Seville book Etymologiae

Bk. 1, ch. 3, sect. 1; p. 96.
Etymologiae