Spaniard Quotes

Wearing Deni's huge vicuna coat with the si cap over my ears, in cold biting winds of December New York, Irwin and Simon led me up to the Russian Tea Room to meet Salvador Dali.
He was sitting with his chin on a finely decorated tile headed cane, blue and white, next to his wife at the Cafe table. He had a cane, blue and white, next to his wife at the Cafe table. He had a little wax moustache, thin. When the waiter asked him what he wanted he said 'One grapefruit...peenk!' and he had big blue eyes like a baby, a real or Spaniard. He told us no artist was great unless he made money. Was he talking about Uccello, Ghianondri, Franca? We didn't even know what money really was or what to do with it. Dali had already read an article about the 'insurgent' 'beats' and was interested. When Irwin told him (in Spanish) we wanted to meet Marlon Brando (who ate in this Russian Tea Room) he said, waving three fingers at me, 'He is more beautiful than M. Brando.'
I wondered why he said that but he probably had a tiff with old Marlon. But what he meant was my eyes, which were blue, like his, and my hair, which is black, like his, and when I looked into his eyes, and he looked into my eyes, we couldn't stand all that sadness. In fact, when Dali and I look in the mirror we can't stand all that sadness. To Dali sadness is beautiful. ~ Jack Kerouac

No one could be following us yet?" the Spaniard asked. "No one," the Sicilian assured him. "It would be inconceivable." "Absolutely inconceivable?" "Absolutely, totally, and, in all other ways, inconceivable," the Sicilian reassured him. "Why do you ask? ~ William Goldman

Threatned men eat bread, says the Spaniard. ~ George Herbert

In the Spanish people there is a mixture of Gothic, Frankish and Moorish blood. One can speak of the Spaniard as one would speak of a brave anarchist. The Arabian epoch-the Arabs look down on the Turks as they do on dogs-was the most cultured, the most intellectual and in every way best and happiest epoch in Spanish history. It was followed by the period of the persecutions with its unceasing atrocities. ~ Adolf Hitler

No soy coreano, ni japonés, soy un nómada desarraigado," he muttered.
"Huh?"
"It's Spanish. I always wanted to be a Spaniard."
I didn't reply.
"But it didn't work out. Turns out, it wasn't just about speaking the language."
"Language has everything to do with your identity--"
"In theory maybe," he said, cutting me off. "But we live in circumstances that can't always be explained away by logic. You'll understand someday. ~ Kazuki Kaneshiro

These Spaniards are all an odd set; the very word Spaniard has a curious, conspirator, Guy-Fawkish twang to it. ~ Herman Melville

No philosophy is cheaper or more vulgar than that which traces all history to diversities of ethnological type and blend, and is ever presenting the venal Greek, the perfidious Sicilian, the proud and indolent Spaniard, the economical Swiss, the vain and vivacious Frenchman. ~ John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

Love without end, hath no end, says the Spaniard: (meaning, if it were not begun on particular ends, it would last). ~ George Herbert

If, as a Spaniard, I am so often offended by the stereotypes that abound regarding my country, how can I accept and repeat the ones that fall even more heavily upon Israel? ~ Antonio Munoz Molina

For the D-Day spies were, without question, one of the oddest military units ever assembled. They included a bisexual Peruvian playgirl, a tiny Polish fighter pilot, a mercurial Frenchwoman, a Serbian seducer, and a deeply eccentric Spaniard with a diploma in chicken farming. ~ Ben Macintyre

Why should you think it so strange that in some countries there are monkeys which insinuates themselves into the good graces of the ladies; they are a fourth part human, as I am a fourth part Spaniard. ~ Voltaire

I was recently told, 'You're a liar!' when I said to somebody I walked down the spine of the Andes. Every Spaniard in the sixteenth, seventeenth century did that. The idea that somebody could just walk! He can jog perhaps in the morning, but he can't walk anywhere! The world has become inaccessible because we drive there. ~ Ivan Illich

In theory I rather admire the Spaniards for not sharing our Northern time-neurosis; but unfortunately I share it myself. ~ George Orwell

The Spaniard was looking at her bare legs, he was going to accidently-on-purpose hit him when Snow started misbehaving. ~ Jennifer Ashley

He that trusts much Obliges much, says the Spaniard. ~ George Herbert

Remind me never to trust a Spaniard, will you?"

She squeezed my arm. "You have my word. The moment I sense you going weak in the knees, I'll break his. ~ Jennifer McGowan

The Spaniards are good at many things, but not at making war. All foreigners are alike appalled by their inefficiency, above all their maddening unpunctuality. The one word that no foreigner can avoid learning is mañana. ~ George Orwell

The Spaniard will become a worthless slave, devoid of soul, of reason, of virtue; forbidden by his inhuman jailers from ever seeing the light. An unfortunate wretch subjugated by men who are his equals but who, in his stupidity, his laziness, his superstition, he believes to be anointed by some higher power: these gods among men, wearing ermine and purple, black capes and cassocks, who under every sun and at every latitude will always exploit a man's foolishness in order to enslave him, to make him brutish and miserable, to sap his valor and his courage. ~ Arturo Perez Reverte

The kingdoms of kings are confined, either by mountains or rivers, or by a change in customs or by a difference of language; but my kingdom is as great as the world, because I am neither Italian, nor French, nor Hindu, nor American, nor a Spaniard; I am a cosmopolitan. No country can claim to be my birthplace, God alone knows in which region I shall die. I adopt every custom, I speak every tongue [... ] In this way, you see, being of no country, asking for the protection of no goverment and acknowledging no man as my brother, I am not restrained or hampered by a single one of the scruples that tie the hands of the powerful or the obstacles that block the path of the weak. ~ Alexandre Dumas

Stop saying that word. It was inconceivable that anyone could follow us, but when we looked behind, there was the man in black. It was inconceivable that anyone could sail as fast as we could sail, and yet he gained on us. Now this too is inconceivable, but look - look - " and the Spaniard pointed down through the night. "See how he rises. ~ William Goldman

To pass over grief, they say, the Italian sleeps; the Frenchman sings; the German drinks; the Spaniard laments, and the Englishman goes to plays. What then does the Scot?' To Jerott's mind sprang, unbidden, a picture of the sword Archie Abernethy was trying to clean at this moment below.

'This one,' he said, 'kills. ~ Dorothy Dunnett

Let there be no mincing of comparisons in this assertion. Not Turner, not Monet, painted so directly blinding shafts of sunlight as has this Spaniard. ~ James Huneker

I played a Spaniard. I looked about as Spanish as any other fair-skinned German. ~ Lawrence Welk

You keep using that word!" the Spaniard snapped. "I don't think it means what you think it does. ~ William Goldman

Like a good Spaniard he needed words as much as he needed money, and the words he wanted had to be the most expansive and inflated available. In Spain words form a kind of currency which must be spent freely, and to do this is not easy for an American, yet not to do it in Spain is to miss the spirit of human relationships. ~ James A. Michener

In reality, France's American territory extended to the west as far as a Frenchman could go without getting shot by a Spaniard, and likewise to the north without getting shot by an Englishman. ~ Mark Stein

Christianity ... has produced the iniquities of the Inquisition, the egotism and celibacy of the monasteries, the fury of religious wars, the ferocity of the Hussite, of the Catholic, of the Puritan, of the Spaniard, of the Irish Orangeman and of the Irish Papist; it has divided families, alienated friends, lighted the torch of civil war, and borne the virgin and the greybeard to the burning pile, broken delicate limbs upon the wheel and wrung the souls and bodies of innocent creatures on the rack; all this it has done, and done in the name of God. ~ Ouida

The monk, the inquisitor, and the Jesuit were lords of Spain,- sovereigns of her sovereign, for they had formed the dark and narrow mind of that tyrannical recluse. They had formed the minds of her people, quenched in blood every spark of rising heresy, and given over a noble nation to a bigotry blind and inexorable as the doom of fate. Linked with pride, ambition, avarice, every passion of a rich, strong nature, potent for good and ill, it made the Spaniard of that day a scourge as dire as ever fell on man. ~ Francis Parkman

In Santiago, the capital of the kingdom of Chile, at the moment of the great earthquake of 1647 in which many thousands lost their lives, a young Spaniard called Jeronimo Rugera was standing beside one of the pillars in the prison to which he had been committed on a criminal charge, and he was about to hang himself. ~ Heinrich Von Kleist

Please look for a new work of historical fiction, The Black Spaniard by L.L.Holt, to be published by Unsolicited Press during the 2016-2017 season. Set roughly between 1792 and 1804 in Vienna, Austria, the novel explores a creative genius's encounters with cultural diversity, transformation, and the love of a good friend. ~ L.L.Holt

In England, footballers are respected more, the game is more noble, there's less cheating. Every Spaniard who goes loves it - and comes back a better player. If I had ever left, it would have been to England. ~ Xavi

Who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa ~ Allen Ginsberg

Andreas had been trying to remember the words to a ribald drinking song he had heard a few weeks ago when Saluador rode up next to him. The Spaniard's horse was a hand or so taller than his own, and in keeping with the man himself, much more spirited. Andreas was tall enough to see over most crowds, but Saluador eclipsed him readily. The Spaniard kept his beard and hair short, cropped close to his head, and when he smiled, his cheeks dimpled in a way that was very disarming to the ladies. Unfortunately, Saluador had not managed how to make his ready charm extend to his eyes. The ladies found this contrast exciting and dangerous, but Andreas thought that a man who couldn't smile naturally was a man who harbored a deep and long-standing grudge. Probably against something he could never change, like God or the weather or the color purple. Which made him unpredictable. ~ Neal Stephenson

I don't like killing a girl," the Spaniard said.
"God does it all the time; if it doesn't bother Him, don't let it worry you. ~ William Goldman

And for which the very name of a Spaniard is reckoned to be frightful and terrible, to all people of humanity or of Christian compassion; as if the kingdom of Spain were particularly eminent for the produce of a race of men who were without principles of tenderness, or the common bowels of pity to the miserable, which is reckoned to be a mark of generous temper in the mind. (2) ~ Daniel Defoe