30 phrases by José Saramago to reflect with his wisdom

Let’s not hurry, but let’s not waste time either.

Life is short, but there is much more to it than we are capable of living!

Inside of us is a thing that has no name, that thing is what we are.

If you have a heart of iron, good luck. Mine, they made it of flesh and bleeds every day.

We have lost the ability to be indignant. Otherwise the world would not be as it is.

Nothing is forever, we say, but there are moments that seem to be suspended, hovering over the inexorable flow of time.

Liking is probably the best way to have, having must be the worst way to like.

The bad thing about victories is that they are not definitive. The good thing about defeats is that they are not definitive either.

The deadly disease of man, as a man, is selfishness.

What’s the use of talking about reasons? Sometimes just one is enough, sometimes not even putting them all together.

We are much more children of the time in which we were born and live, than of the place where we were born.

Physically, we inhabit a space, but sentimentally, we are inhabited by a memory.

Each day brings its joy and its sorrow, and also its useful lesson.

Freedom, and now I speak of freedom of conscience, sometimes risks becoming something utopian, with very little content.

There always comes a time in our lives when we have to say no. The no is the only truly transformative thing that denies the status quo.

If you can look, see. If you can see it, fix it.

Everything in this world, or almost everything, is governed by two words: command and kill. This logic has to be broken.

I learned not to try to convince anyone. The work of convincing is a lack of respect, it is an attempt to colonize the other.

Yup. Times are different, but men are the same…

There always comes a time when we discover that we know much more than we previously thought.

The only way to kill the dragon is to cut off its head, trimming its nails is useless.

He who believes lightly has a light heart.

What gives the true meaning to the encounter is the search, and you have to walk a lot to reach what is close.

We won’t change our lives if we don’t change our lives. You have to lose patience.

Will they say, in sound, the things that, silently, in the silence of the eyes we confess?

People like to be convinced that two plus two is five. And if someone comes along and says there are four, he’s a heretic. Or a killjoy.

The mirror and dreams are similar things, it is like the image of man before himself.

I tried not to do anything in my life that would embarrass the child I was.

We live in a world that Marx did not know, we live in a watched world, we are watched. Privacy is over.

Take half of my body, my heart, my dreams. Take a piece of me, anything that undoes me. It recreates me, because I can no longer bear to belong to everything, but not fit anywhere.