F Sionil Jose quotes: top famous quotes and sayings by F Sionil Jose

Top F Sionil Jose Quotes

Browse top 62 most favorite famous quotes and sayings by F Sionil Jose.

Favorite F Sionil Jose Quotes

1. "To THOSE who want to lift this nation from the dungheap of history, the past does not matter — only the present, the awareness of the deadening rot which surrounds and suffocates us, and what we must do to vanquish it." ~ F. Sionil José

2. "Ubi boni, malum prosperat (Where good men are silent, evil prospers)" ~ F. Sionil José

3. "In death, all men are brothers.-Istak" ~ F. Sionil José

4. "The bravest are usually those whom we do not know or hear about, those anonymous men who dig the trenches, who produce the food." ~ F. Sionil José

5. "This was one lesson that the war taught me - that every event in time presents opportunities that are recognizable only to those with enough sensibility to see them, that it is possible to thrive in adversity in the needs of the rulers are pandered to." ~ F. Sionil José

6. "But you must be sure of what you want the land for. And as for your tenants, if they don't own the land, don't expect them to make sacrifices. It never works, you know. Besides, the transition shouldn't create dislocations. It isn't easy to shift from agriculture to industry." ~ F. Sionil José

7. "It was true then what Padre Jose had said, that there is evil in all of us, that only with faith and its capacity for exorcism can we master this evil.-Istak" ~ F. Sionil José

8. "No stranger can come battering down my door and say he brings me light. This I have within me.-Istak" ~ F. Sionil José

9. "Virtue and wealth seldom go together. The greatest criminals are also the wealthiest men."-The Cripple" ~ F. Sionil José

10. "Was he the epitome of virtue because he was poor? How had it been in the village? There was foul gossip and cussedness anywhere in the world where small men had to think of their stomachs first before thinking about others."-Istak" ~ F. Sionil José

11. "All I can look after is my own farm, serve those who seek when they are sick. I have children to look after so that they will not know what hunger is."-Istak" ~ F. Sionil José

12. "[Of the Bagos:] Like the Moros in the south, they are our brothers. We must recognize their belongingness to Filipinas, their willingness to fight for her.-The Cripple" ~ F. Sionil José

13. "But all men die--as anonymously as they had lived, no matter what their achievements.-Istak" ~ F. Sionil José

14. "Why do people betray their brothers and eventually themselves?-The Cripple" ~ F. Sionil José

15. "We will love her, protect her, all of us--Bisaya, Tagalog, Ilokano, so many islands, so many tribes--because if we act as one, we will be strong and so will she be. Alone you will fall prey to every marauder that passes by. I am not asking that you love Filipinas. I am asking that you do what is right, what is duty..."-The Cripple" ~ F. Sionil José

16. "How many funerals had he attended, how many open graves had he seen, watched the coffins eased down, or sometimes just a frayed mat in which the corpse was bundled, the feet sticking out, the soles white and sometimes still specked with dirt if he was a farmer and could not afford slippers, least of all shoes.-Istak" ~ F. Sionil José

17. "I am a commuter, not between the city and the village, although I do this frequently; not between the inane idealism of the classroom and the stifling reality beyond it, which I must do for survival and self-respect. I am a commuter between what I am now and what I was and would like to be and it is this commuting at lightning speed, at the oddest hours, that has done havoc to me." ~ F. Sionil José

18. "We write from life and call it literature, and literature lives because we are in it." ~ F. Sionil José

19. "The obscenities of this country are not girls like you. It is the poverty which is obscene, and the criminal irresponsibility of the leaders who make this poverty a deadening reality. The obscenities in this country are the places of the rich, the new hotels made at the expense of the people, the hospitals where the poor die when they get sick because they don't have the money either for medicines or services. It is only in this light that the real definition of obscenity should be made." ~ F. Sionil José

20. "We go from one darkness to another and in between, the hidden light of the world, of knowledge. We open our eyes and in this circle of light, we see not just ourselves but others who are our likenesses. This light tells us all men are brothers, but even brothers kill one another, and it is in this light where all this happens. But living in this dazzling light does not blind us to what lies beyond the darkness from where we emerged and where we are going. It is faith which makes our journey possible though it be marred by the unkindness of men, their eternal faulting, before we pass on to another darkness." ~ F. Sionil José

21. "We cannot be rooted in the past forever. We must not be sentimental." ~ F. Sionil José

22. "In a world grown dark with deceit there there are many who are blinded and few who can hold up a light so that we can see the way. More important, so that we can look at ourselves, as well as others, and know how similar we are to the herd." ~ F. Sionil José

23. "The importance not just of history, but of roots - that a writer must have then to nurture, to remember if he is to endure." ~ F. Sionil José

24. "There is a great promise for our cultural growth, but this promise is achieved only when our artists recognize that all great art has nationality, an imprimatur achieved with the keenest remembrance of time and place." ~ F. Sionil José

25. "We do not conquer life, no one can conquer what one cannot define, but at least it is there and it is ours to shape and to possess fully, with all the senses working, with all the powers of the heart surging, as we search for the answer to the greatest riddle of them all- death, the ultimate end, the enemy of all men, the final quietus to the noblest of emotions, the tenacity and ethereal creativity of faith." ~ F. Sionil José

26. "While violence is necessary, it is not the only instrument for change. There are others just as good. But you must accept violence- you cannot begin to build until you have destroyed. You don't know love until you have hated." ~ F. Sionil José

27. "I believe in life, that it is sweet and that, for all its occasional bitterness, we-man, that is-are headed toward something better - fulfillment. There is much shame, however, and so much hypocrisy around us and these inhibit our fulfillment as human beings." ~ F. Sionil José

28. "Never, never hide your pain, scream as if you are dying so you will not be harmed more. Never, never hide your poverty, too. The worst enemies of the poor are the poor themselves. And never, never appear that you are virtuous and without sin. It it is the virtuous who have many enemies because for they shame the many without virtue." ~ F. Sionil José

29. "Indeed time has that ultimate capacity to render the passions of the past when recalled in the present as no more than grandiloquent gestures." ~ F. Sionil José

30. "Literature suffers because writers give their books to colleagues who will then write glowing reviews or saccharine introductions." ~ F. Sionil José

31. "Time will come that all that we love, we will eventually lose, and all that we hate we will eventually face." ~ F. Sionil José

32. "We read because they teach us about people, we can see ourselves in them,in their problems.And by seeing ourselves in them, we clarify ourselves, we explain ourselves to ourselves, so we can live with ourselves..." ~ F. Sionil José

33. "We compromise ourselves the day we are born. If we are looking for the original sin, there it is- our incapacity to live honestly with ourselves because we are human, because we are shackled by custom, by obligations and we accept compromise only in the light of our conscience, answerable as we are only to ourselves." ~ F. Sionil José

34. "I wish I could be honest and true, but truth as I see it is not something abstract, a pious generality---It is justice at work, righteous, demanding, disciplined, sincere and unswerving; otherwise, it is not, it cannot be truth at all." ~ F. Sionil José

35. "Duty comes in many forms; at times duty to country may conflict with duty to family. Yet, with a lucid mind the guises can be torn away and in the end, duty becomes but one, and that duty is to value justice above everything--to do what is right not because someone ordains it, but because the heart which is the seat of truth decrees it so." ~ F. Sionil José

36. "None will thank me for this, nor anyone will remember.-Istak" ~ F. Sionil José

37. "I have been blinded, as many of us have been blinded by our needs. I had thought of only my family--this was the limit to my responsibility, and therefore, my vision.-Istak" ~ F. Sionil José

38. "It is what one really owns in the end, a name."-Istak" ~ F. Sionil José

39. "How can we build trust among our own people? How can we make them confident of themselves and their countrymen so that they will not sell their souls for a few silver dollars?-The Cripple" ~ F. Sionil José

40. "All her life, she was used to being pampered, to having everything she desired, but the things that she valued were never those that could be bought but those small tokens of truth and dogged fidelity which she, herself, could not give to anyone." ~ F. Sionil José

41. "But it really all boils down to this - we don't know them, for all our sincerity, our good intentions. We don't know, because we were never one of them." ~ F. Sionil José

42. "Why do you butcher your carabao and feed a throng because your son is getting a wife?" Father always blustered to them who come asking for loans. But always, in the end, the tenants got the money--what they needed for a "decent" funeral, a baptism, a wedding. And as their debts piled up, they promised, "Next harvest will be good..." ~ F. Sionil José

43. "Hunger precipitated despair." ~ F. Sionil José

44. "Absences can also make one forget. Absence dulls the memory and banishes those who are precious from the mind." ~ F. Sionil José

45. "Now listen...You are young and you don't know many things, but do remember this: you are alone in this earth. Alone. You must act for yourself and no other. Kindness is not appreciated anymore, nor friendship. Think of yourself before you think of others. It's a cruel world and you have to be hard and cruel, too. They will strangle you if you don't strangle them first. Trust no one but your judgment--and even then, don't trust too much." ~ F. Sionil José

46. "In the end, the satisfaction which all of us seek, it seems, can come only from our discovering that we really have molded our life into whatever we want it to be." ~ F. Sionil José

47. "But like my father, I have not done anything. I could not, because I am me, because I died long ago." ~ F. Sionil José

48. "Who then lives? Who then triumphs when all others have succumbed?" ~ F. Sionil José

49. "It is easy to forgive a person his faults when he is dead because in death, he atones for his sins somewhat before the eyes of people who are still living and who have yet to add more on the parchment where their sins are listed." ~ F. Sionil José

50. "But when a person commits suicide, he does not do violence only to himself; he inflicts death upon those whom he least considered would be so afflicted." ~ F. Sionil José

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Without this playing with fantasy, no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable."
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