Subtlest In Spanish Quotes

There comes a moment in your life when you realize that no matter how hard you try, you're never going to be fluent in Spanish. Or go on that African safari you've read about since you were a kid. Or be as excited as you used to be about catching fireflies. I keep trying to find my answer to life - and it gets more elusive the older I get. ~ Kim Gruenenfelder

Lucien took the cigar and lit it, in the Spanish fashion, from that of the priest. "He is right," Lucien thought; "there is plenty of time to kill myself. ~ Honore De Balzac

Skill teachers are made scarce by the belief in the value of
licenses. Certification constitutes a form of market manipulation and is plausible only to a schooled mind.
Most teachers of arts and trades are less skillful, less inventive, and less communicative than the best craftsmen
and tradesmen. Most high-school teachers of Spanish or French do not speak the language as correctly as their
pupils might after half a year of competent drills. Experimentsconducted by Angel Quintero in Puerto Rico
suggest that many young teen-agers, if given the proper incentives, programs, and access to tools, are better than
most schoolteachers at introducing their peers to the scientific exploration of plants, stars, and matter, and to the
discovery of how and why a motor or a radio functions. ~ Ivan Illich

The fratricidal Yoruba wars of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were a great boost to the transatlantic traffic in human beings. There were constant skirmishes between the Ijebus, the Egbas, the Ekitis, the Oyos, the Ibadans, and many other Yoruba groups. Some of the smaller groups might even have been wiped out from history, as the larger ones enlarged their territory and consolidated their power. The vanquished were brought from the interior to the coast and sold to the people of Lagos and to communities along the network of lagoons stretching westward to Ouidah. And they in turn arranged the auctions at which the English, the Portuguese, and the Spanish loaded up their barracoons and slave ships. Some of these intertribal wars were waged for the express purpose of supplying slaves to traders. At thirty-five British pounds for each healthy adult male, it was a lucrative business. ~ Teju Cole

I find myself using Spanish words much more now that I'm older, and I guess I have the authority to do it in public spaces in ways that I felt I couldn't when I was teaching here fifteen years ago. ~ Sandra Cisneros

New Orleans, though beautiful and desperately alive, was desperately fragile. There was something forever savage and primitive there. Something that threatened the exotic and sophisticated life both from within and without. Not an inch of those wooden streets nor a brick of the crowded Spanish houses had not been bought from the fierce wilderness that forever surrounded the city, ready to engulf it. Hurricanes, floods, fevers, the plague, and the damp of the Louisiana climate itself worked tirelessly on every hewn plank or stone facade, so that New Orleans seemed at all times like a dream in the imagination of her striving populace, a dream held intact at every second by a tenacious though unconscious collective will. ~ Anne Rice

U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt has been described as founder of the Bull Moose Party, the man who led his troops up San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War, a big game hunter, family man, civic servant and a host of other things. ~ Zig Ziglar

My first audition happened to be for 'Kindergarten Cop,' and I took that role. I was only starting to learn English at that point. Spanish is my first language, so they made me a speaking character in the movie. I didn't really know I was shooting a movie. I was just having a lot of fun with 30 kids my own age. ~ Odette Annable

I think it's good for anybody to learn languages. Americans are particularly limited in that way. Europeans less so ... We're beginning to have Spanish move in on English in the states because of all the people coming from Hispanic countries ... and we're beginning to learn some Spanish. And I think that's a good thing ... Only having one language is very limiting ... You get to think that's the way the human race is made; there's only one language worth speaking ... Well, this isn't good for English. ~ W.S. Merwin

I glanced over and saw Wyatt glaring at me. Journey's "Lovin' Touchin', Squeezin'" was playing on the radio.

"What?" I asked.

"You secretly hate me, don't you." He gestured toward the radio. "You can't stand the thought of me taking a much needed nap and leaving you to drive without conversation. You're torturing me with this sappy stuff."

"It's Journey. I love this song."

Wyatt mumbled something under his breath, picked up the CD case, and started looking through it. He paused with a choked noise, his eyes growing huge.

"You're joking, Sam. Justin Bieber? What are you, a twelve-year old girl?"

There's gonna be one less lonely girl, I sang in my head. That was a great song. How could he not like that song? Still, I squirmed a bit in embarrassment.

"A twelve-year old girl gave me that CD," I lied. "For my birthday."

Wyatt snorted. "It's a good thing you're a terrible liar. Otherwise, I'd be horrified at the thought that a demon has been hanging out with a bunch of giggling pre-teens."

He continued to thumb through the CDs. "Air Supply Greatest Hits? No, no, I'm wrong here. It's an Air Supply cover band in Spanish." He waved the offending CD in my face. "Sam, what on earth are you thinking? How did you even get this thing?"

"Some tenant left it behind," I told him. "We evicted him, and there were all these CDs. Most were in Spanish, but I've got a Barry Manilow in there ~ Debra Dunbar

Gen stopped and talked to Simon Thaibault, who was reading One Hundred Years Of Solutide in Spanish.
'This will take me forever,' Thaibault said to Gen in French, 'Maybe a hundred years. At least I know I have the time.'
'Who knew that being kidnapped was so much like attending university?' Gen said. ~ Ann Patchett

Whatever sins Christians engaged in the past, and they were extensive, the fact is that the most humane and decent countries in the world nearly all have Christian origins. That is not true of states that grew out of Islam. ~ Dennis Prager

Traditional English, Dutch, French, and Spanish law didn't say that corporations are people. The U.S. Constitution wasn't written with that idea; corporations aren't mentioned anywhere in the document or its Amendments. For America's first century, courts all the way up to the Supreme Court repeatedly said, "No, corporations do not have the same rights as humans." In fact, the Founders were quite clear (as you can see from Hamilton's debate earlier) that only humans inherently have rights. ~ Thom Hartmann

That same day we drove to Seville to celebrate. I asked someone for the name of the smartest hotel in Seville. Alfonso XIII, came the reply. It is where the King of Spain always stays.
We found the hotel and wandered in. It was amazing. Shara was a little embarrassed as I was dressed in shorts and an old holey jersey, but I sought out a friendly-looking receptionist and told her our story.
"Could you help us out? I have hardly any money."
She looked us up and down, paused--then smiled.
"Just don't tell my manager," she whispered.
So we stayed in a $1,000-a-night room for $100 and celebrated--like the King of Spain.
The next morning we went on a hunt for a ring.
I asked the concierge in my best university Spanish where I would find a good (aka well-priced) jeweler.
He looked a little surprised.
I tried speaking slower. Eventually I realized that I had actually been asking him where I might find a good mustache shop.
I apologized that my Spanish was a little rusty. Shara rolled her eyes again, smiling.
When we eventually found a small local jeweler, I had to do some nifty subcounter mathematics, swiftly converting Spanish pesetas into British pounds, to work out whether or not I could afford each ring Shara tried on.
We eventually settled on one that was simple, beautiful--and affordable. Just.
Love doesn't require expensive jewelry. And Shara has always been able to make the simple look exquisite.
Luckily. ~ Bear Grylls

These words on the screen represented her latest project, an attempt at a series of commercial, discreetly feminist crime novels. She had read all of Agatha Christie at eleven years old, and later lots of Chandler and James M.Cain. There seemed no reason why she shouldn't try writing something in between, but she was discovering once again that reading and writing were not the same-you couldn't just soak it up then squeeze it out again. She found herself unable to think of a name for her detective, let alone a cohesive original plot, and even her pseudonym was poor: Emma T. Wilde? She wondered if she was doomed to be one of those people who spend their lives trying things. She had tried being in a band, writing plays and children's books, she had tried acting and getting a job in publishing. Perhaps crime fiction was just another failed project to place alongside trapeze, Buddhism and Spanish. She used the computer's word counter feature. Thirty-five words, including the title page and her rotten pseudonym. Emma groaned, released the hydraulic lever on the side of her office chair and sank a little closer to the carpet. ~ David Nicholls

Stop," a woman shouted. Everyone turned to see someone in a power suit and sensible pumps stomping out of the trees toward me. It was not Raquel. Raquel was running after her, swearing rapidly in Spanish and trying to grab Anne-Whatever Whatever.
"Wow, you are so not invited," I said. ~ Kiersten White

One of the first things to understand was how people knew what language to speak to whom. Where I've lived in the American Southwest, choosing to speak English or Spanish based on how someone looks is risky. If you try English and they don't speak it, you can switch to Spanish if you know it. But if you start with Spanish, you might offend: 'You don't think I speak English?' This can be the case if you're Anglo, even if you speak Spanish very well and just heard the other person speaking Spanish. When I described such an scenario to Indians, they couldn't relate - to them, choosing the wrong language wasn't embarrassing or politically charged. Or so they said. ~ Michael Erard

I had a Spanish teacher in high school. I rarely got in trouble in her room because I felt I was disappointing her if I got a bad grade. That had more power over me than teachers who told me I talked too much. That level of respect I had for her made me not want to fail for her. ~ Clay Aiken

When I hit a block, regardless of what I am writing, what the subject matter is, or what's going on in the plot, I go back and I read Pablo Neruda's poetry. I don't actually speak Spanish, so I read it translation. But I always go back to Neruda. I don't know why, but it calms me, calms my brain. ~ Tea Obreht

There were a lot of kids from Puerto Rico at my high school in Florida; people always assumed I was Puerto Rican. Even now in California, I get talked to on the street in Spanish constantly! ~ Torrey DeVitto

In trench warfare five things are important: firewood, food, tobacco, candles, and the enemy. In winter on the Zaragoza front they were important in that order, with the enemy a bad last ~ George Orwell

I grew up in a highly Hispanic neighborhood. It was very rare to find any race other than Mexicans. I feel very comfortable around Spanish speakers and people from Mexico and people who don't always feel comfortable living in the U.S. because they are in fear of being deported. ~ Emily Rios

Many of the books I read, I had to read them in French, English, or Italian, because they hadn't been translated into Spanish. ~ Antonio Munoz Molina

I took Spanish in high school and I didn't do too well in it. My Spanish teacher told me not to go on with Spanish anymore, so I was discouraged a little bit. ~ Tyler Posey

I make the best Spanish omelettes in the world, but I won't tell you the recipe! ~ Hrithik Roshan

And in that city Ferrante's rise began, at the outer edge of the Spanish court, where he learned that the virtue of sovereigns is their caprice, and Power is an insatiable monster, to be served with slavish devotion in order to snatch every crumb falling from that table. ~ Umberto Eco

I had dropped more or less by chance into the only community of any size in Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief in capitalism were more normal than their opposites. Up here in Aragon one was among tens of thousands of people, mainly though not entirely of working-class origin, all living at the same level and mingling on terms of equality. In theory it was perfect equality, and even in practice it was not far from it. There is a sense in which it would be true to say that one was experiencing a foretaste of Socialism, by which I mean that the prevailing mental atmosphere was that of Socialism. Many of the normal motives of civilized life - snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc. - had simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money - tainted air of England; there was no one there except the peasants and ourselves, and no one owned anyone else as his master. ~ George Orwell

The earliest instinct of the child, and the ripest experience of age, unite in affirming simplicity to be the truest and profoundest part for man. Likewise this simplicity is so universal and all-containing as a rule for human life, that the subtlest bad man, and the purest good man, as well as the profoundest wise man, do all alike present it on that side which they socially turn to the inquisitive and unscrupulous world. ~ Herman Melville

I speak Spanish because I grew up overseas in Spain, Uruguay and Argentina. ~ Bitsie Tulloch

Are you an idiot?' she asked, in perfect Spanish. 'I'm in training,' I admitted. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I'd love to go to art school. I'd love to learn how to draw. I'd love to be fluent in Spanish. I'd like to be a brain surgeon. ~ Billie Joe Armstrong

My friends drink everywhere. They even drink at the laundromat. I tried drinking at the laundromat, and I thought I was in a submarine, navigating the Sea of White Panties with my Spanish-speaking crew. I was like, "Mrs. Sanchez, set the coordinates to Permanent Press! Give me some quarters and another drink! This place is starting to look like a laundromat." ~ Mike Birbiglia