Cabeza De Vaca Quotes

The women in the kitchen sang: Sarampión toca la puerta. Viruela dice: ¿Quién es? Y Escarlatina contesta: ¡Aquí estamos los tres! The cook would sometimes shout a little madly, "Sing it again!" And the women would sing again: Measles knocks at the door. Smallpox asks, Who's there? And Scarlet Fever replies: All three of us are here! ~ Sharman Apt Russell

[Cabeza de Vaca] ceased to be lost not by returning but by turning into something else. ~ Rebecca Solnit

One-third of our people were dangerously ill, getting worse hourly, and we felt sure of meeting the same fate, with death as our only prospect, which in such a country was much worse yet. ~ Alvar N. C. De Vaca

All over the land are vast and handsome pastures, with good grass for cattle, and it strikes me the soil would be very fertile were the country inhabited and improved by reasonable people. ~ Alvar N. C. De Vaca

His mama named him Head?" Talon snorted derisively. "Damn, that's cold. And here I thought this Cabeza had it bad."
"It was a nickname. His real name was Kukulcan Verastegui."
The Cabeza in front of her broke off into a fierce round of what sounded like Mayan cursing. She had no idea what he was saying, but it was raw and explosive as he gestured furiously to punctuate his tirade.
She turned her frown to Talon. "What's he saying?"
Talon shrugged. "I'm from Britain, not Mexico. No idea."
"That pendejo is not me." Cabeza broke off into a mixture of Mayan and Spanish and then returned to English, but this time his accent was much thicker and he rolled his Rs viciously. "His name, for the record, is Chacu. Ese cabrón hijo de la gran puta, pretending to be me. I should have cut his throat for my Act of Vengeance!"
"The real question is, did you cut his throat today?"
Hands on hips, Cabeza glared at Talon for asking such a thing. "No. He got away, along with the … what's the word? Uh … Pigeon crap?"
"Chicken shit?" Talon offered.
"Si!… that was with him. They vanished before I could kill them. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Two days after moving we recommended ourselves to God, Our Lord, and fled, hoping that, although it was late in the season and the fruits of the tunas were giving out, by remaining in the field we might still get over a good portion of the land. ~ Alvar N. C. De Vaca

¡No metáis en la cabeza lo que os quepa en el bolsillo! ¡No metáis en el bolsillo lo que os quepa en la cabeza!"

"No ye may thrust your head in what I fit in your pocket! No ye may thrust in his pocket that you fit on the head!"

"Cebinize sığanı kafanıza sokmayın! Kafanıza sığanı cebinize tıkmayın! ~ Miguel De Unamuno

Humphrey was to say, and now he was planning to continue doing so, to use the chairmanship, in Humphrey's words, "to hang on to [the power] he had wielded as Majority Leader" as a "de facto Majority Leader"; Johnson "had the illusions that he could be in a sense, as Vice President, the Majority Leader." His proposal violated what was to these senators one of the Senate's most sacred precepts - its independence of the executive branch; he was proposing that a member of that branch preside over their meetings. ~ Robert A. Caro

The partner truly best suited to us is not the one who miraculously happens to share every taste, but the one who can negotiate differences in taste with intelligence and grace. ~ Alain De Botton

He enables [his children] to walk before him; he holds their hand in difficulties; he himself carries them along in hardships that he sees as being otherwise unbearable to them. ~ Francis De Sales

Children are the brightest treasures we bring forth into this world, but too large a percentage of the population continues to treat them as inconveniences and nuisances, when they're not treating them as possessions or toys. ~ Charles De Lint

Impromptu thoughts are mental wild-flowers. ~ Marie Anne De Vichy-Chamrond, Marquise Du Deffand

We may observe in some of the abrupt grounds we meet with, sections of great masses of strata, where it is as easy to read the history of the sea, as it is to read the history of Man in the archives of any nation. ~ Jean-Andre De Luc

Ah, that is interesting! Are there chickens?"
"No."
"Nothing is perfect," sighed the fox. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

Laughter distances us from that which is ugly and therefore potentially distressing, and indeed enables us to obtain paradoxical pleasure and therapeutic benefit from it. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Thou art a cat, and a rat, and a coward. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

Marriage was like the surface of an ocean, seemingly placid and serene above; yet if you weren't careful, seething and raging with underground earthquakes below. ~ Melissa De La Cruz

And psychedelics now, as we de-condition ourselves from the post-medieval world, they are present to hand as tools. ~ Terence McKenna

In nations where it exists, every individual takes an equal share in sovereign power and participates equally in the government of the state. Thus he is considered as enlightened, virtuous, strong as any of his fellow men. Why then does he obey society and what are the normal limits of his obedience? He obeys not because he holds an inferior position to those who run the administration or is less capable than his neighbor of self-government but because he recognizes the usefulness of his association with his fellow men and because he knows that this association cannot exist without a regulating power. While he has become a subject in all the mutual duties of citizens, he remains master in his own affairs where he is free and answerable only to God and his action. Out of that grows the general truth that the individual is the sole and best placed judge of his own private concerns and society has the right to control his actions only when it feels such actions cause it damage or needs to seek the cooperation of the individual. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

What men have given the name of friendship to is nothing but an alliance, a reciprocal accommodation of interest, an exchange of good offices; in it is nothing but a system of traffic, in which self-love always proposes to itself some advantage. ~ Francois Alexandre Frederic, Duc De La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

Remember Rio de Janeiro, the size of God's hand, sardines fleshed-open at the market, the way I entered you and moved inside? Looking down, is this the kind of density you can live with? What is the slightness of our bodies to stay, to be good at loving a second time? My mouth pretends it is an oar when it lives inside your mouth, but you are far away. ~ Stacie Cassarino

Since you know the means of getting better, in the name of God, make use of them. Do not take on anything beyond your strength, do not be anxious, do not take things too much to heart, go gently, do not work too long or too hard. ~ Vincent De Paul

There is hardly any political question in the United States that sooner or later does not turn into a judicial question. From that, the obligation that the parties find in their daily polemics to borrow ideas and language from the judicial system. Since most public men are or have formerly been jurists, they make the habits and the turn of ideas that belong to jurists pass into the handling of public affairs. The jury ends up by familiarizing all classes with them. Thus, judicial language becomes, in a way, the common language; so the spirit of the jurist, born inside the schools and courtrooms, spreads little by little beyond their confines; it infiltrates all of society, so to speak; it descends to the lowest ranks, and the entire people finishes by acquiring a part of the habits and tastes of the magistrate. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

I hate war, for it spoils conversation. ~ Bernard Le Bovier De Fontenelle

experienced in the things of the world, everything that has some difficulty about it seems to thee impossible; but time will pass, as I said before, and I will tell thee some of the things I saw down there which will make thee believe what I have related now, the truth of which admits of neither reply nor question. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

One is not conceived a lady, one turns into one. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

There are few occasions when we should make a bad bargain by giving up the good on condition that no ill was said of us. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The arrogance of wealth and the dejection of wretchedness, capital cities of unwonted extent, a lax morality, a vulgar egotism, and a great confusion of interests, are the dangers which almost invariably arise from the magnitude of States. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

The ability to reason the un-reason which has afflicted by reason saps my ability to reason, so that I complain with good reason of your infinite loveliness. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

The diet industry is making a lot of money selling us fad diets, nonfat foods full of chemicals, gym memberships, and pills while we lose a piece of our self-esteem every time we fail another diet or neglect to use the gym membership we could barely afford. ~ Portia De Rossi

A man is sometimes as different from himself as he is from others. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

For me, the real earth is that chosen part of the universe, still almost universally dispersed and in course of gradual segregation, but which is little by little taking on body and form in Christ. ~ Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

Hitler, to Bertrand de Jouvenel, February 1936:

People have said that I owe my success to the fact that I have created a mystique… or more simply that I have been lucky. Well, I will tell you what has carried me to where I am. Our political problems appeared complicated. The German people did not comprehend them. In these conditions they preferred to leave it to the professional politicians to get them out of this confused mess. I, on the other hand, simplified the problems. I reduced them to the simplest terms. The masses realized this and they have followed me. Thus the class struggle, this famous class struggle! It is an absurdity, the class struggle, and I denounced the absurdity, and the people understood me! I made an appeal to reason. It was heard by the German people! ~ Adolf Hitler

I, who am king of the matter I treat, and who owe an accounting for it to no one, do not for all that believe myself in all I write. I often hazard sallies of my mind which I mistrust. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Peoples do not judge in the same way as courts of law; they do not hand down sentences, they throw thunderbolts; they do not condemn kings, they drop them back into the void; and this justice is worth just as much as that of the courts. ~ Maximilien De Robespierre

Finally, the lock clicked and she tugged the secret door open. A rotten stench hit her like a fist. She drew away. The boy at her side recoiled, afraid. Sarah fell to her knees. Sarah could not speak, she could only quiver, her fingers covering her eyes, her nose, blocking out the smell ... She sank to her knees again and she screamed at the top of her lungs, she screamed, for her mother, for her father, screamed for Michel. ~ Tatiana De Rosnay

As a necessary prerequisite to the creation of new forms of expression one might, I suppose, argue that current sensibilities respond uniquely to the notion of exhaustion as exhaustion, although that does de facto seem rather limiting. ~ Brian Ferneyhough

All we do is to look after the opinions and learning of others: we ought to make them our own. ~ Michel De Montaigne

The sure way to be cheated is to think one's self more cunning than others. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Life is good, when you live in such a way to make it so ~ Benjamin De Hoyos

Friendship that possesses the whole soul, and there rules and sways with an absolute sovereignty, can admit of no rival. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Any government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck.
[On Water] ~ Guy De Maupassant