11 quotes
The time for your labor has been granted.
Ficciones (1944)
You will reply that reality hasn't the slightest need to be of interest. And I'll answer you that reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but that hypotheses may not.
Ficciones (1944)
Like every writer, he measured the virtues of other writers by their performance, and asked that they measure him by what he conjectured or planned.
Ficciones (1944)
If Dahlmann was without hope, he was also without fear.
Ficciones (1944)
The truth is that we live out our lives putting off all that can be put off; perhaps we all know deep down that we are immortal and that, sooner or later, all men will do and know all things.
Ficciones (1944)
What one man does is something done, in some measure, by all men. For that reason a disobedience committed in a garden contaminates the human race; for that reason it is not unjust that the crucifixion of a single Jew suffices to save it.
Ficciones (1944)
On the floor, and hanging on to the bar, squatted an old man, immobile as an object. His years had reduced and polished him as water does a stone or the generations of men do a sentence. He was dark, dried up, diminutive, and seemed outside time, situated in eternity.
Ficciones (1944)
That history should have imitated history was already sufficiently marvellous; that history should imitate literature is inconceivable....
Ficciones (1944)
In adultery, there is usually tenderness and self-sacrifice; in murder, courage; in profanation and blasphemy, a certain satanic splendour. Judas elected those offences unvisited by any virtues: abuse of confidence and informing.
Ficciones (1944)
"Maybe this crime belongs to the history of Jewish superstitions," murmmured Lönnrot.
"Like Christianity," the editor put in.
Ficciones (1944)
The execution was set for the 29th of March, at nine in the morning. This delay was due to a desire on the part of the authorities to act slowly and impersonally, in the manner of planets or vegetables.
Ficciones (1944)