Jose Bergamin Quotations

Sensuality without love is a sin; love without sensuality is worse than a sin.

There are those who dance to the rhythm that is played to them, those who only dance to their own rhythm, and those who don't dance at all.

True solidarity is only possible among the solitary.

Pride in a man is confused with dignity; in a woman, with self-love.

A reformer knows neither how to do nor to undo.

When there is nothing to fear is the time to begin fearing everything.

Try not to turn your life into a race, least of all an obstacle race.

True art tries not to attract attention in order to be noticed.

A belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition.

There are no good or bad habits. All habits are, by definition, bad.

A woman who does not become the slave of just one man becomes the slave of all men.

To be thirsty and to drink water is the perfection of sensuality rarely achieved. Sometimes you drink water; other times you are thirsty.

To sin offers repentance and forgiveness; not to sin offers only punishment.

The man who gets drunk in peacetime is a coward. The man who gets drunk in wartime goes on being a coward.

Better than succeeding little by little is failing at one go.

To light one candle to God and another to the Devil is the principle of wisdom.

You can hesitate before deciding, but not once the decision is made.

The most original sin is not the thinker's but the poet's.

A piece of advice always contains an implicit threat, just as a threat always contains an implicit piece of advice.

The first condition for making music is not to make a noise.

The novel is born of disillusionment; the poem, of despair.

Effort and result are never simultaneous. In art, only the result counts.

In French literature, you can choose a la carte; in Spanish literature, there is only the set meal.

Perhaps it's more merciful to forget the dead instead of remembering them.

What is reasoned has nothing to do with what is reasonable.

The man who spends all his time looking up to heaven is not always the best; in fact, he is usually the worst.

You can say the opposite of something you've said but you can't do the opposite of something you've done.

If you really believe music is dangerous, you should let it go in one ear and out the other.

Only one thing has to matter for everything to matter.

Art is good but it isn't the best.

Drinking spirits cannot cause spiritual damage.

Even if you're not going anywhere, don't get in the way.

Ignorance is learned; innocence is forgotten.

To be young is to live in the hope of escaping youth; to be old, in the despair of having succeeded.

Those who are scandalized by a naked body--thinks the Devil--are easy prey: they are already doomed.

All true tradition usually appears revolutionary.

Do we have to talk in order to agree or agree in order to talk?

An ignorance of Marx is as frequent among Marxists as an ignorance of Christ is among Catholics.

A German immersed in any civilization different from his own loses a weight equivalent in volume to the amount of intelligence he displaces.

Theology is the logic of the Devil.

The only time a man thinks is when he's alone.

The thirst for adventure is the vent which Destiny offers; a war, a crusade, a gold mine, a new country, speak to the imagination and offer...

Life is a dangerous adventure, says the American, and he is half right: life is dangerous, but it's not an adventure.

Happiness is always a coincidence.

Man is a question; woman is an answer. The mistake women make today is to offer themselves as answers before being questioned.

When you are listening to music it is better to cover your eyes than your ears.

The quality of a man's mind can generally be judged by the size of his wastepaper basket.

Erik Satie does not say the opposite of Debussy; he says the same thing only the other way round.

A rocket is a reed that thinks brilliantly.

Morality measured in centimeters: all mothers believe that only their daughters dance decently.

The barometer that shows "variable" is an ironic indictment of God.

I fear only that which I love, says man, according to Montaigne. Woman replies: I love only that which I fear.

When I listen to the engine of my car, I might say it sounds fine, but it would not occur to me to say "What lovely music!

When the English have scored a goal, they think nothing more remains to be done.

We say of an animal that it is intelligent, and we say the same thing of a woman; but in neither case is it usually appropriate, clearly for very different reasons.

In love, it is the weak who strike and the strong who caress.

You need to have a God, a lover, and an enemy, says the poet. Exactly: you need to have three enemies.

A rocket is an experiment; a star is an observation.

Tradition simply means that we need to end what began well and continue what is worth continuing

It may be impossible to have a revolution without crimes but that does not make revolution a crime.

Who learns most from a good book is the author.

To be ready to fail is to be prepared for success.