Home > Work > The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis
81 " If I think and feel, I know not who is thinking and feeling, I am only the place where there is thinking and feeling, "
― José Saramago , The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis
82 " Si las sentencias vueltas del revés pasaran a ser leyes, qué mundo haríamos con ellas, el milagro es que los hombres no se vuelvan locos cada vez que abren la boca para hablar. "
83 " it might have been the sight of a little angel being carried to its grave on a white bier, some Fernando who did not live long enough to become a poet, some Ricardo who could not become a doctor or poet. Perhaps the reason for this outburst of weeping is simply that the "
84 " Having crossed the inevitable threshold of each year, I begin to see before me the flowerless valley, the rumbling abyss. "
85 " nada es posible poner en el lugar del espacio o en el lugar del tiempo de donde alguien o algo fue retirado "
86 " Words, once uttered, remain open like doors, we nearly always enter, but sometimes we wait outside, expecting some other door to open, some other words to be uttered, "
87 " He had chosen the lighter meal, following the maître d’s suggestion out of indifference rather than conviction, for he could see no real advantage to it. "
88 " This is like being at home, in the bosom of one’s family, by the fireside I do not possess and perhaps never will. "
89 " Todos padecemos una enfermedad, una enfermedad básica, podemos decir, que es inseparable de lo que nosotros somos y que, en cierto modo, hace lo que somos, y acaso sería más exacto decir que cada uno de nosotros es su enfermedad, por ella somos tan poco, y también por ella conseguimos ser tanto "
90 " La esperanza, sólo la esperanza, nada más, se llega a un punto que no hay nada más que la esperanza, y entonces descubrimos que aun lo tenemos todo "
91 " A strange sign, and of what, a man thinking of his hotel room as if it were his own home. "
92 " Casi veríamos repetida aquí la graciosa historia del señor de La Palice, quien, un cuarto de hora antes de morir, aún estaba vivo, eso dirían los humoristas de mayor desenvoltura, que nunca se detuvieron a pensar en la tristeza que es no estar vivo un cuarto de hora después "
93 " No, my dear Reis, being and existing are not the same thing, and not simply because we have these two different words at our disposal, on the contrary it is because they are not the same thing that we have these two words and make use of them. "
94 " No le valió a Dios la pena de echarnos del paraíso cuando en tan poco tiempo lo reconquistamos "
95 " How true it is that we are nothing in this world, yet no matter how often we repeat these words and though we see them confirmed every day, they are always hard to accept. "
96 " We are so apt at understanding that sometimes half a word suffices. "
97 " Each human being has his own way of sleeping and dying, but the flood continues, time rains on us, drowns us. "
98 " It is I, without irony, without sorrow, content to feel not even contentment, as a man who desires nothing more or knows that he can possess nothing more. "
99 " Les beaux esprits se rencontrent, as the French say, a remarkably subtle race. "
100 " We are vanity and cannot endure, but the mirror endures, the same, because it rejects us. "