Home > Author > F. Sionil José
81 " But when a person commits suicide, he does not do violence only to himself; he inflicts death upon those whom he least considered would be so afflicted. "
― F. Sionil José , Tree (Rosales Saga, #2)
82 " Why do you butcher your carabao and feed a throng because your son is getting a wife?" Father always blustered to them who come asking for loans. But always, in the end, the tenants got the money--what they needed for a "decent" funeral, a baptism, a wedding. And as their debts piled up, they promised, "Next harvest will be good... "
83 " Hunger precipitated despair. "
84 " It is the heart which dictates, which rules, which lets us live and die. "
― F. Sionil José , Vibora!
85 " There is nothing like the land you belong to claiming you back. But everywhere the earth is the same.-Old David "
86 " Absences can also make one forget. Absence dulls the memory and banishes those who are precious from the mind. "
87 " Now listen...You are young and you don't know many things, but do remember this: you are alone in this earth. Alone. You must act for yourself and no other. Kindness is not appreciated anymore, nor friendship. Think of yourself before you think of others. It's a cruel world and you have to be hard and cruel, too. They will strangle you if you don't strangle them first. Trust no one but your judgment--and even then, don't trust too much. "
88 " If you loved someone for many years, you become instinctively aware of his feelings, even divine his thoughts and anticipate his actions, so that it would seem that you two have really become one. "
89 " I think that I was born on a day God was fast asleep. And whatever happened after my birth was nothing but dreamless ignorance. "
90 " When I see justice sold to the highest bidder I remember Tio Baldo and how he had lost. So honesty then and service are rewarded by banishment and people sell themselves without so much ado because they have no beliefs--only a price. "
91 " I would like to see all this as a big joke that is being played upon us, but I have seen what was wrought in the past--the men who were destroyed without their being lifted from the dungheap of poverty, without recourse to justice. "
92 " But like my father, I have not done anything. I could not, because I am me, because I died long ago. "
93 " Who then lives? Who then triumphs when all others have succumbed? "
94 " It is easy to forgive a person his faults when he is dead because in death, he atones for his sins somewhat before the eyes of people who are still living and who have yet to add more on the parchment where their sins are listed. "
95 " I was shocked at the revelation of her vaulting ambition, her greed. I should have loathed her or, knowing what kind of a person she was, I should have realized the futility of any personal attachment, the impossibility of its maturing into something warm, human enduring. By then, I had known a bit of the prostitute's psychology, the ruthlessness which marked her relationship with men but I ignored these. "
― F. Sionil José
96 " The Philippines just need 100 youth to stand up for their country "
97 " Are You, then the God of white people, and if we who are brown worship You, do we receive Your blessings as white men do? "
― F. Sionil José , Dusk (Rosales Saga, #1)
98 " I pray that You be not white, that You be without color and that You be in all men because goodness cannot be encased only in white. "
99 " I knew long ago that their blood is the same as mine. No stranger can come battering down my door and say he brings me light. This I have within me. "
100 " The bravest are usually those whom we do not know or hear about, those anonymous men who dig the trenches, who produce the food. They are the corpus—you understand that word—the body and also the soul of a nation. Eustaquio, my words are just words, but all through history—and you have studied it—it has always been the most faceless men, those foot soldiers, who have suffered most, who have died. It is they who make a nation. "