José Rizal citations

Page 2

“No good water comes from a muddy spring. No sweet fruit comes from a bitter seed.”

“Fame to be sweet must resound in the ears of those we love, in the atmosphere of the land that will guard our ashes. Fame should hover over our tomb to warm with its heat the chill of death, so that we may not be completely reduced to nothingness, that something of us may survive.”

“Necessity is the most powerful divinity the world knows--it is the result of physical forces set in operation by ethical forces.”

“Law has no skin, reason has no nostrils.”

“God has made man a cosmopolite. He created seas for ships to glide on, the wind to push them, and the stars to guide them even in darkest night.”

“Each one writes history according to his convenience.”

“The world laughs at another man's pain.”

“Death has always been the first sign of European civilization when introduced in the Pacific.”

“To live is to be among men, and to be among men is to struggle, a struggle not only with them but with oneself; with their passions, but also with one's own.”

“No, let us not make God in our image, poor inhabitants that we are of a distant planet lost in infinite space. However brilliant and sublime our intelligence may be, it is scarcely more than a small spark which shines and in an instant is extinguished, and it alone can give us no idea of that blaze, that conflagration, that ocean of light.”

“Virtue lies in the middle ground.”

“We want the happiness of the Philippines, but we want to obtain it through noble and just means. If I have to commit villainy to make her happy, I would refuse to do so, because I am sure that what is built on sand sooner or later would tumble down.”

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

“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”

“; De nobis, post haec, tristis sententia fertur!:After all this, you still speak ill of us!”

“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.”

“; You must shatter the vase to spread its perfume, and smite the rock to get the spark.”

“To doubt God is to doubt one's own conscience, and in consequence it would be to doubt everything.”

“I believe in revelation, but not in revelation which each religion claims to possess… but in the living revelation which surrounds us on every side — mighty, eternal, unceasing, incorruptible, clear, distinct, universal as is the being from whom it proceeds, in that revelation which speaks to us and penetrates us from the moment we are born until we die.”

“Travel is a caprice in childhood, a passion in youth, a necessity in manhood, and an elegy in old age.”

“; It is a useless life that is not consecrated to a great ideal. It is like a stone wasted in the field without becoming part of an edifice.”

“Friar! What a strange name. I don't remember having created such a thing! (God speaking to the angel Gabriel)”

“No one has a monopoly of the true God, nor is there a nation or religion that can claim, or at any rate prove, that it has been given the exclusive right to the Creator or sole knowledge of His Being.”

“Man is multiplied by the number of languages he possesses and speaks.”

“Muse who in the past inspired me to sing of the throes of love:
Go and repose.
What I need is a sword, rivers of gold,
and acrid prose.”

“; The school of suffering tempers the spirit, the arena of combat strengthens the soul.”

“It breaks immortality's neck
Contemplates crime and therefore halts it;
It humbles barbarous nations
And makes of savages, champions.”

“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!”

“; Pure and spotless must the victim be if the sacrifice is to be acceptable.”