All the Names Quotes

“You know the name you were given, you do not know the name that you have”
― Jose Saramago, All the Names

“Don't be afraid, the darkness you're in is no greater than the darkness inside your own body, they are two darknesses separated by a skin, I bet you've never thought of that, you carry a darkness about with you all the time and that doesn't frighten you...my dear chap, you have to learn to live with the darkness outside just as you learned to live with the darkness inside”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“There are people like Senhor José everywhere, who fill their time, or what they believe to be their spare time, by collecting stamps, coins, medals, vases, postcards, matchboxes, books, clocks, sport shirts, autographs, stones, clay figurines, empty beverage cans, little angels, cacti, opera programmes, lighters, pens, owls, music boxes, bottles, bonsai trees, paintings, mugs, pipes, glass obelisks, ceramic ducks, old toys, carnival masks, and they probably do so out of something that we might call metaphysical angst, perhaps because they cannot bear the idea of chaos being the one ruler of the universe, which is why, using their limited powers and with no divine help, they attempt to impose some order on the world, and for a short while they manage it, but only as long as they are there to defend their collection, because when the day comes when it must be dispersed, and that day always comes, either with their death or when the collector grows weary, everything goes back to its beginnings, everything returns to chaos.”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“Old photographs are very deceiving, they give us the illusion that we are alive in them, and it's not true, the person we are looking at no longer exists, and if that person could see us, he or she would not recognise him or herself in us, 'Who's that looking at me so sadly,' he or she would say.”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“Strictly speaking, we do not make decisions, decisions make us.”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“فـ الأحزان الكبيرة، والإغواءات الكبيرة، والأخطاء الكبيرة هي على الدوام تقريباً نتيجة بقاء المرء وحيداً في الحياة”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“All the great sadnesses, great temptations, and great mistakes are almost always the result of being alone in life, without a prudent friend to advise us when we are troubled by something more serious than our normal everyday problems.”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“عندما تحين الفرصة، يمكن حتى للطيبين أن يتحولوا إلى متصلبين ومتجبرين”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“إن الصور القديمة تخدعنا كثيرًا، فهي توهمنا بأننا أحياء فيها، وهذا غير صحيح، لأن الشخص الذي ننظر إليه فيها لم يعد موجودًا، ولو كان بمقدوره أن يرانا فلن يتعرف على نفسه فينا، وسيقول من هذا الذي ينظر إليّ بوجه محزون؟.”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“Nothing so tires a person as having to struggle, not with himself, but with an abstraction.”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“Contrary to what is generally believed, meaning and sense were never the same thing, meaning shows itself at once, direct, literal, explicit, enclosed in itself, univocal, if you like, while sense cannot stay still, it seethes with second, third and fourth senses, radiating out in different directions that divide and subdivide into branches and branchlets, until they disappear from view, the sense of every word is like a star hurling spring tides out into space, cosmic winds, magnetic perturbations, afflictions.”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“... we know that it is the search that gives meaning to any find and that one often has to travel a long way in order to arrive at what is near.”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“It is well known that the human mind very often makes decisions for reasons it clearly does not know, presumably because it does so after having travelled the paths of the mind at such speed that, afterwards, it cannot recognise those paths, let alone find them again.”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“الوحدة لم تكن قط بالرفقة الطيبة، فالأحزان الكبيرة، والإغواءات الكبيرة، والأخطاء الكبيرة هي على الدوام تقريبًا نتيجة بقاء المرء وحيدًا في هذه الحياة.”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“إن الصور القديمة تخدعُنا كثيراً، فهي توهمنا بأننا أحياءُ فيها ،وهذا غير صحيح ، لأن الشخص الذي ننظر إليه فيها لم يعد موجوداً”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“What torments people have to go through when they leave the safety of their homes to become embroiled in mad adventures.”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“ولم يكن لديه أي سبب للبحث عن أحد ، وخصوصاً في مثل هذه الساعة من الليل”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“الضمائر تصمتُ أكثر مما هو مطلوبٌ منها، ولهذا أبتُدعت القوانين!!”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“وهؤلاء هم أشخاصٌ يقتصرون على العيش كيفما أتفق ، أشخاصٌ لم يواجهوا القدر قط وجهاً لوجه”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“...las viejas fotografías engañan mucho, nos dan la ilusión de que estamos vivos en ellas, y no es cierto, la persona a quien estamos mirando ya no existe, y ella, si pudiese vernos, no se reconocería en nosotros.”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“هناك لحظات في هذه الحياة نطلق فيها العنان لأنفسنا، ولا نتورع عن مكاشفة أول مجهول نصادفه بآلامنا”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“..then he added, as if requiring a response to his own remark,
'Probably the greater the difference, the greater the similarity, and the greater the similarity, the greater the difference,' at that moment he did not yet know how right he was.”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“نحن في الواقع لا نتخذ القرارات، وإنما القرارات هي التي تتخذنا”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“أنت تعرف الاسم الذي أطلقوه عليك، ولكنك لا تعرف الاسم الذي هو لك.”
― جوزيه ساراماجو, All the Names

“Así como la muerte definitiva es el fruto último de la voluntad de olvido, así la voluntad de recuerdo podrá perpetuarnos la vida.”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“كلما زاد التحديق تضاءلت الرؤية”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“حيثُ تُكرر الكِذبة نَفسها، فـ تتحول إلى حقيقة !”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“Al contrario de lo que se cree, sentido y significado nunca han sido lo mismo, el significado se queda aquí, es directo, literal, explícito, cerrado en sí mismo, unívoco, podríamos decir, mientras que le sentido no es capaz de permanecer quieto, hierve de segundos sentidos, terceros y cuartos, de direcciones radicales que se van dividiendo y subdividiendo en ramas y ramajes hasta que se pierdende vista, el sentido de cada palabra se parece a una estrella cuando se pone a proyectar mareas vivas por el espacio, vientos cósmicos, perturbaciones magnéticas, aflicciones".”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“لا وجود لحياة دون أكاذيب”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“...indeed it is in the General Cemetery that the results of progress are set out before the eyes of the studious or the merely curious, there are even those who say that a cemetery like this is a kind of library which contains not books but buried people, it really doesn't matter, you can learn as much from people as from books.”
― José Saramago, All the Names