84 quotes
Mankind is composed of two sorts of men — those who love and create, and those who hate and destroy.
Letter to a Cuban Farmer (1893)
A nation is not a complex of wheels, nor a wild horse race, but a stride upward concerted by real men.
A Glance at the North American's Soul Today (1886)
In night's darkness I've seen
raining down on my head
pure flames, flashing rays
of beauty divine.
Simple Verses (1891)
Once I reveled in a destiny
like no other joy I'd known:
when the warden — reading
my death sentence — wept.
Simple Verses (1891)
All is beautiful and unceasing,
all is music and reason,
and all, like diamond,
is carbon first, then light.
Simple Verses (1891)
A grain of poetry suffices to season a century.
Dedication of the Statue of Liberty (1887)
Happiness exists on earth, and it is won through prudent exercise of reason, knowledge of the harmony of the universe, and constant practice of generosity.
Martí : Thoughts/Pensamientos (1994)
Day and night I always dream with open eyes.
Life on earth is a hand-to-hand mortal combat... between the law of love and the law of hate.
Letter (1881)
Men are products, expressions, reflections; they live to the extent that they coincide with their epoch, or to the extent that they differ markedly from it.
Henry Ward Beecher (1887)
The conceited villager believes the entire world to be his village.
Our America (1891)
Peoples are made of hate and of love, and more of hate than love. But love, like the sun that it is, sets afire and melts everything.
Martí : Thoughts/Pensamientos (1994)
Everything that divides men, everything that specified, separates or pens them, is a sin against humanity.
My Race (1893)
Cuba and Belgium are both countries of modest size, surrounded by large, powerful and often hostile powers.
Man is not free to watch impassively the enslavement and dishonor of men, nor their struggles for liberty and honor.
My Race (1893)
Men have no special right because they belong to one race or another: the word man defines all rights.
Men of action, above all those whose actions are guided by love, live forever. Other famous men, those of much talk and few deeds, soon evaporate. Action is the dignity of greatness.
Martí : Thoughts/Pensamientos (1994)
A knowledge of different literatures is the best way to free one's self from the tyranny of any of them.
On Oscar Wilde (1882)
Man needs to go outside himself in order to find repose and reveal himself.
Poetry is the work of the bard and of the people who inspire him.
Poesia (1891)