Luis Santos > Luis's Quotes

“la verdadera grandeza humana está en la práctica de la bondad sin condiciones, en la capacidad de dar a los que nada tienen, pero no lo que nos sobra, sino una parte de lo poco que tenemos.”
― Leonardo Padura Fuentes, El hombre que amaba a los perros

“tantos deseos de que se quedara como de que se fuera. Volver”
― Leonardo Padura Fuentes, El hombre que amaba a los perros

“descubrir lo fútil de todos los orgullos humanos y la dimensión exacta de su insignificancia cósmica ante la potencia esencial de lo eterno.”
― Leonardo Padura Fuentes, El hombre que amaba a los perros

“A vida é uma vertigem e cada qual deve gerir a sua.”
― Leonardo Padura, El hombre que amaba a los perros

“Pero el revolucionario verdadero empieza a serlo cuando subordina su ambición personal a una idea. Los revolucionarios pueden ser cultos o ignorantes, inteligentes o torpes, pero no pueden existir sin voluntad, sin devoción, sin espíritu de sacrificio.”
― Leonardo Padura Fuentes, El hombre que amaba a los perros

“true human grandeur lay in the practice of kindness without conditions, in the capacity of giving to those who had nothing, but not what we have left over but rather a part of what little we have—giving until it hurts without practicing the deceitful philosophy of forcing others to accept our concepts of good and truth because (we believe) they’re the only possible ones and because, besides, they should be grateful for what we give them, even when they didn’t ask for it.”
― Leonardo Padura, The Man Who Loved Dogs

“The strictly theoretical and so attractive dream of possible equality had been traded for the worst authoritarian nightmare in history when it was applied to reality, understood, with good reason (more, in this case), as the only criterion of truth.”
― Leonardo Padura, The Man Who Loved Dogs

“And how could anyone consent to give up the smell of open books, old or new?”
― Elizabeth Kostova, The Swan Thieves

“The problem is simply finding the right person. Ask Plato. Just make sure she finishes your thoughts and you finish hers. That's all you need.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, The Swan Thieves

“...what will we someday do, I always wonder, without the pleasures of turning through books and stumbling on things we never meant to find?”
― Elizabeth Kostova, The Swan Thieves

“The heart does not go backward. Only the mind.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, The Swan Thieves

“I believe in walking out of a museum before the paintings you've seen begin to run together. How else can you carry anything away with you in your mind's eye?”
― Elizabeth Kostova, The Swan Thieves

“In those days, I still thoroughly enjoyed the romance I called "by myself"; I didn't know yet how it gets lonely, picks up a sharp edge later on that ruins a day now and then-- ruins more than that, if you're not careful.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, The Swan Thieves

“There are people who stick in one's memory much more clearly after a brief acquaintance than others whom one sees day after day after a long period.”
― Elizabeth Kostova

“Doesn't every love express itself this way, with the seeds of both its flowering and its ruin in the very first words, the first breath, the first though?”
― Elizabeth Kostova, The Swan Thieves

“I don't think painters have the answers about a painting except the painting itself. Anyway, a painting has to have some kind of mystery to it to make it work.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, The Swan Thieves

“We couldn’t be sure of anything except the power of love…and we are under no requirement to believe in a particular source of that love as long as we could keep giving and receiving some in our own lives.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, The Swan Thieves

“No system which implies control by privilege seekers has ever ended in any other way than collapse.”
― Erik Larson, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin

“Recalling his first impression of Hitler, Hanfstaengl wrote, "Hitler looked like a suburban hairdresser on his day off.”
― Erik Larson, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin

“In Germany, Dodd had noticed, no one ever abused a dog, and as a consequence dogs were never fearful around men and were always plump and obviously well tended. "Only horses seem to be equally happy, never children or the youth," he wrote. ... He called it "horse happiness" and had noticed the same phenomenon in Nuremburg and Dresden. In part, he knew this happiness was fostered by German law, which forbade cruelty to animals and punished violators with prison.
"At a time when hundreds of men have been put to death without trial or any sort of evidence of guilt, and when the population literally trembles with fear, animals have rights guaranteed them which men and women cannot think of expecting."
He added, "One might easily wish he were a horse!”
― Erik Larson, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin

“Germans grew reluctant to stay in communal ski lodges, fearing they might talk in their sleep. They postponed surgeries because of the lip-loosening effects of anesthetic. Dreams reflected the ambient anxiety. One German dreamed that an SA man came to his home and opened the door to his oven, which then repeated every negative remark the household had made against the government.”
― Erik Larson, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin

“I wear a pony coat with skin like watered silk and muff of lamb. My fingers lie in depths of warmth. I have a jacket of silver sequins and heavy bracelets of rich corals. I wear about my neck a triple thread-like chain of lapis lazulis and pearls. On my face is softness and content like a veil of golden moonlight. And I have never in all my lives been so lonely.”
― Erik Larson, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin

“Let me explain how such a thing might occasionally happen,' Goebbels said. 'All during the twelve years of the Weimar Republic our people were virtually in jail. Now our party is in charge and they are free again. When a man has been in jail for twelve years and he is suddenly freed, in his joy he may do something irrational, perhaps even brutal. Is that not a possibility in your country also?'

Ebbutt, his voice even, noted a fundamental difference in how England might approach such a scenario. 'If it should happen,' he said, 'we would throw the man right back in jail.”
― Erik Larson, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin

“a new phrase was making the rounds in Berlin, to be deployed upon encountering a friend or acquaintance on the street, ideally with a sardonic lift of one eyebrow: “Lebst du noch?” Which meant, “Are you still among the living?”
― Erik Larson, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin

“I had started with nothing, and if I now found myself with nothing, I was at least even. Actually, I was much better than even: I had had a wonderful time.”
― Erik Larson

“Mowrer and his family made it safely to Tokyo. His wife, Lillian, recalled her great sorrow at having to leave Berlin. “Nowhere have I had such lovely friends as in Germany,” she wrote. “Looking back on it all is like seeing someone you love go mad—and do horrible things.”
― Erik Larson, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin

“I have always wondered what it would have been like for an outsider to have witnessed firsthand the gathering dark of Hitler’s rule. How did the city look, what did one hear, see, and smell, and how did diplomats and other visitors interpret the events occurring around them? Hindsight tells us that during that fragile time the course of history could so easily have been changed. Why, then, did no one change it? Why did it take so long to recognize the real danger posed by Hitler and his regime?”
― Erik Larson, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin

“MARTHA’S CHEERY VIEW of things was widely shared by outsiders visiting Germany and especially Berlin. The fact was that on most days in most neighborhoods the city looked and functioned as it always had.”
― Erik Larson, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin

“As before, Dodd believed Hitler was “perfectly sincere” about wanting peace. Now, however, the ambassador had realized, as had Messersmith before him, that Hitler’s real purpose was to buy time to allow Germany to rearm. Hitler wanted peace only to prepare for war. “In the back of his mind,” Dodd wrote, “is the old German idea of dominating Europe through warfare.”
― Erik Larson, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin

“In conclusion,” he said, “one may safely say that it would be no sin if statesmen learned enough of history to realize that no system which implies control of society by privilege seekers has ever ended in any other way than collapse.” To fail to learn from such “blunders of the past,” he said, was to end up on a course toward “another war and chaos.”
― Erik Larson, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin