Miguel de Unamuno Quotes

Faith makes us live by showing us that life, although it is dependent upon reason, has its well spring and source of power elsewhere, in something supernatural and miraculous. Cournot the mathematician, a man of singularly well-balanced and scientifically equipped mind has said that it is this tendency towards the supernatural and miraculous that gives life, and that when it is lacking, all the speculations of reason lead to nothing but affliction of the spirit. ...And in truth we wish to live.

And if it is grievous to be doomed one day to cease to be, perhaps it would be more grievous still to go on being always oneself, and no more than oneself, without being able to be at the same time other, without being able to be at the same time everything else, without being able to be all.

Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the God idea, not God Himself.

One night there lowered into my mind one of those dark, sad, and mournful dreams which I cannot banish from my thoughts.. I dreamed that I was married, that I had a child, that this child died, and that over its body…I said to my wife: “Behold our love! Shortly it will decay: this is the way everything ends.

My conduct must be the best proof, the moral proof, of my supreme desire; and if I do not end by convincing myself, within the bounds of the ultimate and irremediable uncertainty of the truth of what I hope for, it is because my conduct is not sufficiently pure. Virtue, therefore, is not based upon dogma, but dogma upon virtue, and it is not faith that creates martyrs but martyrs who create faith. There is no security or repose — so far as security and repose are obtainable in this life, so essentially insecure and unreposeful — save in conduct that is passionately good.

Imagination, which is the social sense, animates the inanimate and anthropomorphizes everything; it humanizes everything and even makes everything identical with man. And the work of man is to supernaturalize Nature — that is to say, to make it divine by making it human, to help it to become conscious of itself, in short. The action of reason, on the other hand, is to mechanize or materialize.

And love, above all when it struggles against destiny, overwhelms us with the feeling of the vanity of this world of appearances and gives us a glimpse of another world, in which destiny is overcome and liberty is law.

Sí, ya sé que uno de esos caudillos de la que llaman la revolución social ha dicho que la religión es el opio del puebo. Opio... Opio... Opio, sí. Démosle opio, y que duerma y que sueñe.

And the other Don Quixote remained here among us, fighting with desperation. And does he not fight out of despair? ...But "despair is the master of possibilities," as we learn from Salazar y Torres (Elegir al enemigo, Act I.), and it is despair and despair alone that begets heroic hope, absurd hope, mad hope. Spero quia absurdum [I hope because it is absurd], it ought to have been said, rather than credo [Credo quia absurdam — I believe because it is absurd].

El mundo es un caleidoscopio. La lógica la pone el hombre. El supremo arte es el del azar.

¿Que sueño...? Dejadme soñar; si ese sueño es mi vida, no me despertéis de él.

And in touching your own nothingness, in not feeling your permanent base, in not reaching your own infinity, still less your own eternity, you will have a whole-hearted pity for yourself, and you will burn with a sorrowful love for yourself — a love that will consume your so-called self-love, which is merely a species of sensual self-delectation, the self-enjoyment, as it were, of the flesh of your soul.

- И това ако не е метафизика!
- А какво е любовта, ако не метафизика?
- Какво говориш?
- Особено при теб. Защото в твоя случай цялата ти влюбеност е само церебрална, или както се казва, тя съществува само там вътре, в главата ти.

venceréis pero no convenceréis

The truth is that my work — I was going to say my mission — is to shatter the faith of men here, there, and everywhere, faith in affirmation, faith in negation, and faith in abstention in faith, and this for the sake of faith in faith itself; it is to war against all those who submit, whether it be to Catholicism, or to rationalism, or to agnosticism; it is to make all men live the life of inquietude and passionate desire.