Jose Marti Quotes

Men are like the stars; some generate their own light while others reflect the brilliance they receive.

Do something useful and you will have everything you want. Doors are shut for those who are dull and lazy; life is secure for those who obey the law of work.

The force of passion is balanced by the force of interest.

A child who does not think about what happens around him and is content with living without wondering whether he lives honestly is like a man who lives from a scoundrel's work and is on the road to being a scoundrel.

A child, from the time he can think, should think about all he sees, should suffer for all who cannot live with honesty, should work so that all men can be honest, and should be honest himself.

Peoples are made of hate and of love, and more of hate than love.

We are free, but not to be evil, not to be indifferent to human suffering, not to profit from the people, from the work created and sustained through their spirit of political association, while refusing to contribute to the political state that we profit from.

Racist" is a confusing word, and it should be clarified. Men have no special rights simply because they belong to one race or another. When you say "men," you have already imbued them with all their rights.

Yet God does exist in the idea of good, which watches over the birth of every being and leaves in the soul embodied in that being one pure tear. Good is God, and the tear the source of eternal feeling.

To Educate is to Free.

The truthe wakes up once and never dies.

Sane love, is not love

Fortunately, there is a sane equilibrium in the character of nations, as there is in that of men.

In this world, there must be a certain degree of honor just as there must be a certain amount of light. When there are many men without honor, there will always be some others who bear in themselves the honor of many men.

God is weeping. And how the people weep when they make God weep!

Charm is a product of the unexpected.

It is terrible to speak of you, Liberty, for one who lives without you.

Rights are to be taken, not requested; seized, not begged for.

Books console us, calm us, prepare us, enrich us and redeem us.

If I survive, I will spend my whole life at the oven door seeing that no one is denied bread and, so as to give a lesson of charity, especially those who did not bring flour.

The only way to be totally free is through education.

Socialist ideology, like so many others, has two main dangers. One stems from confused and incomplete readings of foreign texts, and the other from the arrogance and hidden rage of those who, in order to climb up in the world, pretend to be frantic defenders of the helpless so as to have shoulders on which to stand.

Terrible times in which priests no longer merit the praise of poets and in which poets have not yet begun to be priests.

The wretch who lives without freedom feels like dressing in the mud from the streets Those who have you, o Liberty, do not know. you. Those who do not have you should not speak of you, but win you.

Day and night I always dream with open eyes.

Mientras mas honda la herida,
Es mi canto mas hermoso.
While more deeper is the wound
The more beautiful the art.

All is beautiful and unceasing, all is music and reason , and all, like diamond, is carbon first, then light .

People can only be free if they are truly educated.

Other famous men, those of much talk and few deeds, soon evaporate. Action is the dignity of greatness.

My poems please the brave : My poems, short and sincere , Have the force of steel Which forges swords .

To give one's life is a right only when one gives it unselfishly.

Men of action, above all those whose actions are guided by love, live forever.

Man has to suffer. When he has no real afflictions, he invents some.

Like bones to the human body, the axle to the wheel, the wing to the bird, and the air to the wing, so is liberty the essence of life. Whatever is done without it is imperfect.

Habit creates the appearance of justice; progress has no greater enemy than habit.

Treacherous assassins, enemies of the people, and worthy of everyone's ridicule are those who, under the pretext of guiding future generations, teach them an isolated system of doctrines and whisper in their ear (instead of the sweet message of love) the barbarous gospel of hate.

He who does not see things in their depth should not call himself a radical.

To educate is to give man the keys to the world, which are independence and love, and to give him strength to journey on his own, light of step, a spontaneous and free being.

The dagger plunged in the name of freedom is plunged into the breast of freedom.

It is a sin not to do what one is capable of doing.

The first duty of a man is to think for himself

To change masters is not to be free.

No fruit on earth can rival the cemetery's crop

He who receives money in trust to administer for the benefit of its owner, and uses it either for his own interest or against the wishes of its rightful owner, is a thief.

Only oppression should fear the full exercise of freedom.

An insatiable appetite for glory leads to sacrifice and death, but innate instinct leads to self-preservation and life.

He who could have been a torch and stoops to being a pair of jaws is a deserter.

Nature has placed the need to see justice done in some souls, and the need to flout and affront it in others.

A knowledge of different literatures is the best way to free one's self from the tyranny of any of them.

To use for our exclusive benefit what is not ours is theft.

Only tyranny fears the full expression of liberty.

We are free, but no to be evil

Man can never be more perfect than the sun. The sun burns us with the same light that warms us. The sun has spots (stains). The ungrateful only talk about the spots (stains). The grateful talk about the light.

Every human being has within him an ideal man, just as every piece of marble contains in a rough state a statue as beautiful as the one that Praxiteles the Greek made of the god Apollo.

Man needs to go outside himself in order to find repose and reveal himself.

But love, like the sun that it is, sets afire and melts everything. what greed and privilege to build up over whole centuries the indignation of a pious spirit, with its natural following of oppressed souls, will cast down with a single shove.

The vote is a trust more delicate than any other, for it involves not just the interests of the voter, but his life, honor and future as well.

Culture, which makes talent shine, is not completely ours either, nor can we place it solely at our disposal. Rather, it belongs mainly to our country, which gave it to us, and to humanity, from which we receive it as a birthright.

Let those who desire a secure homeland conquer it. Let those who do not conquer it live under the whip and in exile, watched over like wild animals, cast from one country to another, concealing the death of their souls with a beggar's smile from the scorn of free men.

Freedoms, like privileges, prevail or are imperiled together You cannot harm or strive to achieve one without harming or furthering all.

Man is a living duty, a depository of powers that he must not leave in a brute state. Man is a wing.

Everything that divides men, everything that separates or herds men together in categories, is a sin against humanity.

In truth, men speak too much of danger.

Life on earth is hand-to-hand mortal combat ... between the law of love and the law of hate.

I have lived in the monster and I know its insides; and my sling is the sling of David .

Man needs to suffer. When he does not have real griefs he creates them.

A poem is something sacred. Let no one Take it for anything except itself.

Like stones rolling down hills, fair ideas reach their objectives despite all obstacles and barriers. It may be possible to speed or hinder them, but impossible to stop them.

I come from all places and to all places I go: I am art among the arts and mountain among mountains. I know the strange names of flowers and herbs and of fatal deceptions and magnificent griefs. In night's darkness I've seen raining down on my head pure flames, flashing rays of beauty divine.

To busy oneself with what is futile when one can do something useful, to attend to what is simple when one has the mettle to attempt what is difficult, is to strip talent of its dignity.

But when women are moved and lend help, when women, who are by nature calm and controlled, give encouragement and applause, when virtuous and knowledgeable women grace the endeavor with their sweet love, then it is invincible.

Happiness exists on earth, and it is won through prudent exercise of reason, knowledge of the harmony of the universe, and constant practice of generosity.