Quotes for Friday from Jose Saramago's Blindness

The sceptics, who are many and stubborn, claim that, when it comes to human nature, if it is true that the opportunity does not always make the thief, it is also true that it helps a lot. [17]

To put is simply, this woman could be classed as a prostitute, but the complexity in the web of social relationships, whether by day or night, vertical or horizontal, of the period here described cautions us to avoid a tendency to make hasty and definitive judgments, a mania which, owing to our exaggerated self-confidence, we shall perhaps never be rid of. [23]

Although it may be evident just how much cloud there is in Juno, it is not entirely licit, to insist on confusing with a Greek goddess what is no more than an ordinary concentration of drops of water hovering in the atmosphere. [23]

It was my fault, she sobbed, and it was true, no one could deny it, but it is also true, if this brings her any consolation, that if, before every action, we were to begin by weighing up the consequences, thinking about them in earnest, first the immediate consequences, then the probable, then the possible, then the imaginable ones, we should never move beyond the point where our first thought brought us to a halt. The good and the evil resulting from our words and deeds go on apportioning themselves, one assumes in a reasonably uniform and balanced way, throughout all the days to follow, including those endless days, when we shall not be here to find out, to congratulate ourselves or ask for pardon, indeed there are those who claim that this is the much-talked-of immortality [75]

We all have our moments of weakness, just as well that we are still capable of weeping, tears are often our salvation, there are times when we would die if we did not weep [93]

We have a colonel here who believes the solution would be to shoot the blind as soon as they appear, Corpses instead of blind men would scarcely improve the situation, To be blind is not the same as being dead, Yes, but to be dead is to be blind [104]

Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are [121]

[T]here is nothing in this world that belongs to us in an absolute sense [136]

[E]ven in the worst misfortunes it is possible to find enough good to be able to bear the aforesaid misfortunes with patience [144]

[W]hat one does on one's own initiative is generally less arduous than if one has to do something under duress. [160]

However, to everything its proper season, just because you rise early does not mean that you will die sooner. [163]

[I]t is not from someone's face and the litheness of their body that we can judge their strength of heart. [165]

And when is it necessary to kill, she asked herself as she headed in the direction of the hallway, and she herself answered the question, When what is still alive is already dead. [183]

Just as the habit does not make the monk, the sceptre does not make the king, this is a fact we should never forget [199]

[T]he fact is that hunger has always had a keen sense of smell, the kind that penetrates through all barriers, just as dogs do. [216]

[T]he reply to be given is that all stories are not like those about the creation of the universe, no one was there, no one witnessed anything, yet everyone knows what happened. [251]

Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are. [261]

It's a time-honoured custom to pass by the dead without seeing them [282]

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