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Carry yourself seriously but speak with a sweet voice. Humiliate no one, since, as you know, adolescence is characterized by unbridled self-love, and when a teacher shines light on the good qualities of a child, it does much more than focusing on their vices.

— Julia de Burgos

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Source: On her teaching philosophy in “‘The Fatal Conscience’: Julia de Burgos, Puerto Rico’s Greatest Poet” in The New York Review of Books (2018 Apr 26)
Source quality: Source identified Names the work or year, but without an exact location.

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Oh love entertained in stars and doves,/how like a joyous spray you cross my soul!

Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia de Burgos (1982)

The storm passed faithful over my tired soul/when you appeared with the tenderness of a star.

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From all the towns/strong arms will rise,/the arms of millions of men/who populate the progress of the earth.

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Let our life be completely present./Let it search for the future only in the soul./Let it rehearse truths. Let it feel in idea./Let it always extend cutting distances.

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Humanly, and free,/and distant, and matter/that down there, very deep/I will rhyme a song.

Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia de Burgos (1982)

We are of the new voice, stretched, instinctive/that will shake the language of progress.

Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia de Burgos (1982)

Since I never had a world among the living/offer me a world among the dead!

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Puerto Rico is the sword/that will delay the advance/of the saxon empire!/Let her wound be the last/that on its latin soil/the vile oppressor makes.

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To save something beautiful you must destroy it, so it does not fall, limp and degraded, from our miserable human hands.

From my invaded nation,/the battlefield today is independence.

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How immense is being, when you thought yourself dead!

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It must be the caress of the useless,/the endless sadness of being a poet,/of singing and singing, without breaking/the peerless tragedy of existence.

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Where does the laughter wander that decorated life/when your heart gathered my sadnesses?

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Julia de Burgos (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.