José Rizal: Quotes about homeland

José Rizal was Filipino writer, ophthalmologist, polyglot and nationalist. Explore interesting quotes on country.
José Rizal: 128   quotes 51   likes

“How long have you been away from the country?" Laruja asked Ibarra.

"Almost seven years."
"Then you have probably forgotten all about it."

"Quite the contrary. Even if my country does seem to have forgotten me, I have always thought about it.”

José Rizal book Noli Me Tángere

Source: Noli Me Tángere

Country

“Genius has no country. It blossoms everywhere. Genius is like the light, the air. It is the heritage of all.”

José Rizal

Toast to the artists Juan Luna and Felix Hidalgo: Madrid, Spain (25 June 1884)

Light , Country

“The Filipino loves his country no less than the Spaniard does his, and although he is quieter, more peaceful and with more difficulty stirred up, once aroused he does not hesitate and for him the struggle means death to the finish. He has both the meekness and ferocity of the carabao. Climate affects bipeds in the same way it does quadrupeds.”

José Rizal

"The Philippines: A Century Hence" in La Solidaridad (1889-90) - translated from the Spanish by Charles Derbyshire

Love , Death , Peace , Way

“…Does your Excellency know the spirit of (my) country? If you did, you would not say that I am "a spirit twisted by a German education," for the spirit that animates me I already had since childhood, before I learned a word of German. My spirit is "twisted" because I have been reared among injustices and abuses which I saw everywhere, because since a child I have seen many suffer stupidly and because I also have suffered. My "twisted spirit" is the product of that constant vision of the moral ideal that succumbs before the powerful reality of abuses, arbitrariness, hypocrisies, farces, violence, perfidies and other base passions. And "twisted" like my spirit is that of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos who have not yet left their miserable homes, who speak no other language except their own, and who, if they could write or express their thoughts, would make my Noli me tangere very tiny indeed, and with their volumes there would be enough to build pyramids for the corpses of all the tyrants…”

José Rizal

Open letter to Barrantes on the Noli, published in La Solidaridad (15 February 1890)

Education , Home , Reality , Suffering

“; The glory of saving a country is not for him who has contributed to its ruin.”

José Rizal book El Filibusterismo

El Filibusterismo

Country

“Let us not ask for miracles, let us not ask for concern with what is good for the country of him who comes as a stranger to make his fortune and leave afterwards.”

José Rizal book Noli Me Tángere

Source: Noli Me Tángere

Country

“He who knows the surface of the earth and the topography of a country only through the examination of maps.. is like a man who learns the opera of Meyerbeer or Rossini by reading only reviews in the newspapers. The brush of landscape artists Lorrain, Ruysdael, or Calame can reproduce on canvas the sun's ray, the coolness of the heavens, the green of the fields, the majesty of the mountains…but what can never be stolen from Nature is that vivid impression that she alone can and knows how to impart--the music of the birds, the movement of the trees, the aroma peculiar to the place--the inexplicable something the traveller feels that cannot be defined and which seems to awaken in him distant memories of happy days, sorrows and joys gone by, never to return”

José Rizal

"Los Viajes" in La Solidaridad (15 May 1889)- translated from the Spanish by Nick Joaquin

Music , Travel , Feeling , Mountain

“The Philippines should be grateful to you if you would write a complete history of our country from an impartial point of view.. But don't expect thanks and laurels--crowns of flowers and laurels are the inventions of free people. But perhaps your children may gather the fruit of what the father planted.”

José Rizal

Letter to Blumentritt (13 April 1887)

Children , People , History , Flowers

“Is it not sad, I said to my countrymen, that we have to learn from a foreigner about ourselves? Thanks to the German scholars we get accurate information about ourselves, and when everything in our country has been destroyed and we wish to verify the historical correctness of certain facts we shall have to come to Germany to search for these facts, in German museums and books!”

José Rizal

Letter to Blumentritt (13 April 1887)

Books , Sadness , Search , Learning