Guirnaldas De Luces Quotes

Saturday evening, on a quiet lazy afternoon, I went to watch a bullfight in Las Ventas, one of Madrid's most famous bullrings. I went there out of curiosity. I had long been haunted by the image of the matador with its custom made torero suit, embroidered with golden threads, looking spectacular in his "suit of light" or traje de luces as they call it in Spain. I was curious to see the dance of death unfold in front of me, to test my humanity in the midst of blood and gold, and to see in which state my soul will come out of the arena, whether it will be shaken and stirred, furious and angry, or a little bit aware of the life embedded in every death. Being an avid fan of Hemingway, and a proponent of his famous sentence "About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after," I went there willingly to test myself. I had heard atrocities about bullfighting yet I had this immense desire to be part of what I partially had an inclination to call a bloody piece of cultural experience. As I sat there, in front of the empty arena, I felt a grandiose feeling of belonging to something bigger than anything I experienced during my stay in Spain. Few minutes and I'll be witnessing a painting being carefully drawn in front of me, few minutes and I will be part of an art form deeply entrenched in the Spanish cultural heritage: the art of defying death. But to sit there, and to watch the bull enter the arena… To watch one bull ~ Malak El Halabi

When trust permeates a ministry, great things are possible, not the least of which is an opportunity to reach the ministry's potential. ~ Max De Pree

an honest man is the man who keeps his own counsel, and will not divide the plunder. ~ Honore De Balzac

Grown-ups love figures ... When you tell them you've made a new friend they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you "What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies? " Instead they demand "How old is he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make? " Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

To rob God of nothing; to refuse Him nothing; to require of Him nothing; this is great perfection. ~ Jeanne Marie Bouvier De La Motte Guyon

It's not you she hates, Schuyler. It's me. She just turned her anger outward because she couldn't bring herself to hate whom she loves. ~ Melissa De La Cruz

Learning agility is the willingness and ability to learn, de-learn, and relearn. Limitations on learning are barriers invented by humans. ~ Pearl Zhu

If anyone accuses me of contradicting myself, I shall reply; I have been wrong once or more often, however I do not aspire to be always wrong. ~ Luc De Clapiers

When I was a little girl... a movie made me realize what I wanted to be in life. ~ Sonja De Lange

We live not by things, but by the meaning of things. It is needful to transmit the passwords from generation to generation. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

And walking on like that, I found the well at daybreak. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

In every walk of life each man puts on a personality and outward appearance so as to look what he wants to be thought; in fact you might say that society is entirely made up of assumed personalities. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

If I found the right guy, I think I would get married. Maybe. I just feel like it's just a contract. Why sign any more contracts, really? ~ Drea De Matteo

Everywhere on Earth, at this moment, in the new spiritual atmosphere created by the appearance of the idea of evolution, there float, in a state of extreme mutual sensitivity, love of God and faith in the world: the two essential components of the Ultra-human. ~ Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

The origins and travels of our purchases remain matters of indifference, although to the more imaginative at least a slight dampness at the bottom of a carton, or an obscure code printed along a computer cable, may hint at processes of manufacture and transport nobler and more mysterious, more worthy of wonder and study, than the very goods themselves. ~ Alain De Botton

I told you before, I'll fight anyone. I don't care. ~ Oscar De La Hoya

Shall not this bygone Eden that we knew In our Eternal Life have shape and hue? For where Time is not shall not all Time be? In that calm breast whereto our souls are cleaving Shall we not find our loved ones beyond grieving About the hearth-stone of Eternity? ~ Alphonse De Lamartine

Fame is an empty noise. Let us put our ears to the centuries that have gone: we no longer hear anything; those who, at another time, shall walk among our urns, shall hear no more. The good - that is what we must pursue, whatever the price, preferring the title of a dead hero to that of a living coward. ~ Louis Antoine De Saint-Just

May these happy United States attain that complete splendour and prosperity which will illustrate the blessings of their government, and for ages to come rejoice the departed souls of their founders! ~ Marquis De Lafayette

The things we know best are the things we haven't been taught. ~ Luc De Clapiers

There is nothing to unify God and the soul but the Cross. ~ Louis De Wohl

Modern society includes three types of men who can never think very highly of the world
the priest, the physician, and the attorney-at-law. They all wear black, too, for are they not in mourning for every virtue and every illusion? ~ Honore De Balzac

Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness. ~ Honore De Balzac

Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Travel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish to go. ~ Alain De Botton

If you no longer have any income, you will not be neglected-you will not starve to death ... We panic at first, but God does not always allow the evil that is feared to happen. ~ Vincent De Paul

Only by coming to grips with difficulty can you realize your full potential. ~ Charles De Gaulle

The essence of life is the smile of round female bottoms, under the shadow of cosmic boredom. ~ Guy De Maupassant

A man should think less of what he eats and more with whom he eats because no food is so satisfying as good company. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Precedent forces us to suppose that later generations will one day walk around our houses with the same attitude of horror and amusement with which we now consider many of the possessions of the dead. They will marvel at our wallpapers and our sofas and laugh at aesthetic crimes to which we are impervious. This awareness can lend to our affections a fragile, nervous quality. Knowing that what we now love may in the future, for reasons beyond our current understanding, appear absurd is as hard to bear in the context of a piece of furniture in a shop as it is in the context of a prospective spouse at an altar. ~ Alain De Botton

Is it possible your pragmatical worship should not know that the comparisons made between wit and wit, courage and courage, beauty and beauty, birth and birth, are always odious and ill taken?. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

We've been wicked for such a very long time, you know. It does get tiresome after a while. ~ Melissa De La Cruz

Some beautiful things are more impressive when left imperfect than when than when too highly finished ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

I entered literary life as a meteor, and I shall leave it like a thunderbolt.
[As quoted in Pol Neveux's introduction, Guy De Maupassant: A Study] ~ Guy De Maupassant

On the brink of sleep I have a gloomy thought: that saving yourself is only pushing yourself even deeper into the trap rather than getting out. Dying is the only way out. ~ Erri De Luca

There are few joys to compare with the telling of a well-told tale. ~ Charles De Lint

Choosing a person to marry is hence just a matter of deciding exactly what kind of suffering we want to endure rather than of assuming we have found a way to skirt the rules of emotional existence. We will all by definition end up with that stock character of our nightmares, "the wrong person."

This needn't be a disaster, however. Enlightened romantic pessimism simply assumes that one person can't be everything to another. We should look for ways to accommodate ourselves as gently and as kindly as we can to the awkward realities of living alongside another fallen creature. There can only ever be a "good enough" marriage.

For this realization to sink in, it helps to have had a few lovers before settling down, not in order to have had a chance to locate "the right person," but in order to have had an ample opportunity to discover at first hand, and in many different contexts, the truth that there isn't any such a person; that everyone really is a bit wrong when considered from close up. ~ Alain De Botton

La Nebuleuse is a poem of lovely & deep perspective, where, symboloized by artless beings, are seen the successive generations of men following each other uncomprehendingly, almost undiscerningly, so different are their souls, & always summed up, to the moment of their decline, by the child, the future, the "nebula", whose birth, finally confirmed, brings death. Under its morning clearness, to the faded smiles of aged stars. And, the vision ended, it is urged that this morrow, which is becoming today, will be altogether likes its dead brothers, & that in short there is nothing new in the spectacle which amuses the dead years leaning…

But this "nothingness" has no importance for the human atoms that form & determine it; it is the delightful newness that we breathe & of which we live. The new! The new! And let each intelligence, though short-lived, affirm his will to exist, & to be dissimilar to all antecedent or surrounding manifestations, & let each nebula aspire to the character of a star whose light shall be distinct & clear among other lights. ~ Remy De Gourmont

Sobriety is love of health, or inability to eat much. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld