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We are so afraid of the idea of having to die... that we always try to find excuses for the dead, as if we were asking beforehand to be excused when it is our turn.

Jose Saramago

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Jose Saramago
Age: 87 †
Born: 1922
Born: November 16
Died: 2010
Died: June 18
Chronicler
Diarist
Dramaturge
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Translator
Writer
Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico
Jose Saramago
Turn
Dies
Excused
Turns
Beforehand
Idea
Excuses
Ideas
Excuse
Find
Asking
Trying
Afraid
Always
Dead

More quotes by Jose Saramago

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There are times when it is best to be content with what one has, so as not to lose everything.
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Dignity has no price ... when someone starts making small concessions, in the end life loses all meaning.
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Death is present every day in our lives. It's not that I take pleasure in the morbid fascination of it, but it is a fact of life.
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but it is also true, if this brings her any consolation, that if, before every action, we were to begin weighing up the consequences, thinking about them in earnest, first the immediate consequences, then the probably, then the possible, then the imaginable ones, we should never move beyond the point where our first thought brought us to a halt.
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Some people spend their entire lives reading but never get beyond reading the words on the page, they don't understand that the words are merely stepping stones placed across a fast-flowing river, and the reason they're there is so that we can reach the farther shore, it's the other side that matters...
Jose Saramago
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Life is like that, full of words that are not worth saying or that were worth saying once but not any more, each word that we utter will take up the space of another more deserving word, not deserving in its own right, but because of the possible consequences of saying it.
Jose Saramago
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I was a good pupil at primary school: in the second class I was writing with no spelling mistakes, and the third and fourth classes were done in a single year.
Jose Saramago
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when you are old and realize that time is running out, you start imagining that you have the cure for all the ills of the world in your hand, and get frustrated because no one pays you any attention.
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The beginning is never the clear, precise end of a thread, the beginning is a long, painfully slow process that requires time and patience in order to find out in which direction it is heading, a process that feels its way along the path ahead like a blind man the beginning is just the beginning, what came before is nigh on worthless.
Jose Saramago
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Nothing so tires a person as having to struggle, not with himself, but with an abstraction.
Jose Saramago
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We live in a very peculiar world. Democracy isn't discussed, as if it was taken for granted, as if democracy had taken God's place, who is also not discussed.
Jose Saramago
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Death has no need to be cruel, taking people's lives is more than enough.
Jose Saramago
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Why did we become blind, I don't know, perhaps one day we'll find out, Do you want me to tell you what I think, Yes, do, I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see.
Jose Saramago
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Each part in itself constitutes the whole to which it belongs.
Jose Saramago
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Words were not given to man in order to conceal his thoughts.
Jose Saramago
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A tree weeps when cut down, a dog howls when beaten, but a man matures when offended.
Jose Saramago
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The ear has to be educated if one wishes to appreciate musical sounds, just as the eyes must learn to distinguish the value of words.
Jose Saramago
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Death ... doesn't take her eyes off us for a minute, so much so that even those who are not yet due to die feel her gaze pursuing them constantly.
Jose Saramago
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Strictly speaking, we do not make decisions. Decisions make us.
Jose Saramago
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The wisest man I ever knew in my whole life could not read or write.
Jose Saramago