Alberto Quotes & Sayings

I am a keeper of flocks.
The flocks are my thoughts
and all my thoughts are sensations.
I think with my eyes and my ears,
with my hands and with my feet
and with my nose and my mouth.
For to consider a flower is to both see it and smell it
and to eat of fruit is to understand its meaning.

So when the sun is at its brightest
and I feel guilty for embracing it,
I stretch out, supine, on the grassy earth,
and close my sun drenched eyes.
I view my entire body lying firmly on reality,
I know the truth, and am content. — Alberto Caeiro

In every literate society, learning to read is something of an initiation, a ritualized passage out of a state of dependency and rudimentary communication. — Alberto Manguel

The dreams you craft at the level of your soul are very different from goals, which are tangible, measurable and set the future. — Alberto Villoldo

The categories that a reader brings to a reading, and the categories in which that reading itself is placed - the learned social and political categories, and the physical categories into which a library is divided - constantly modify one another in ways that appear, over the years, more or less arbitrary or more or less imaginative. Every library is a library of preferences, and every chosen category implies an exclusion. — Alberto Manguel

Whores are the most honest girls. They present the bill right away. — Alberto Giacometti

The True Self is infinite. It knows no boundaries. Pure essence. Pure light. Engulfing the mind, the soul, the body, the invisible real, with its radiance. — Alberto Villoldo

If only Mexico paid their workers a decent wage. — Luis Alberto Urrea

A kid thinking about fairy tales and believing in fairy tales
Acts like a sick god, but like a god.
Because even though he affirms that what doesn't exist exists,
He knows things exist, that he exists,
He knows existing exists and doesn't explain itself,
And he knows there's no reason at all for anything to exist.
He knows being is the point.
All he doesn't know is that thought isn't the point.

(10/1/1917) — Alberto Caeiro

The ratio of literacy to illiteracy is constant, but nowadays the illiterates can read and write. — Alberto Moravia

The more you fail, the more you succeed. It is only when everything is lost and - instead of giving up - you go on, that you experience the momentary prospect of some slight progress. Suddenly you have the feeling - be it an illusion or not - that something new has opened up. — Alberto Giacometti

Sartre, in his memoirs, confessed to much the same experience. Like Plato, I passed from knowledge to its subject. I found more reality in the idea than in the thing because it was given to me first and because it was given for a thing. It was in books that I encountered the universe: digested, classified, labelled, mediated, still formidable. — Alberto Manguel

All beings exist and nothing else
And that's why they're called beings — Alberto Caeiro

The weight of absence is as much a feature of any library as the constriction of order and space. — Alberto Manguel

Samadhi. Immersed in concentration and meditation, all thoughts and distractions far away. Your focus steady, you achieve samadhi. All that exists is the heart of the experience. There is no one meditating, no one concentrating, only awareness. There is no yogi, only the yoga. (3) — Alberto Villoldo

To an Earthkeeper, love is not a feeling or something your barter with. Love is the essence of who you are, and it radiates from you as a brilliant aura: You become love, practice fearlessness, and attain enlightenment. — Alberto Villoldo

Gringos! They have copied us again — Luis Alberto Urrea

To become completely healed is to become the healer - bringing the beauty and meaning you found into the world. — Alberto Villoldo

Also at times, on the surface of streams,
Water?bubbles form
And grow and burst
And have no meaning at all
Except that they're water?bubbles
Growing and bursting. — Alberto Caeiro

My favorite red carpet jewelry is by Alberto Parada, who designed my Oscar jewelry, as it's modern yet old school at the same time. — Carly Steel

From my village I see as much in the Universe as you can see from earth.
So my village is as big as any other land
Because I'm the size of what I see,
Not the size of my height. — Alberto Caeiro

The liberation of those who commit murder and terrorism is unacceptable. — Alberto Fujimori

I love flowers for being flowers, directly.
And I love trees for being trees without my thought. — Alberto Caeiro

We may train or peek for a certain race, but running is a lifetime sport. — Alberto Salazar

One Spirit Medicine allows you to experience communion with Spirit and understand the workings of creation. This understanding is not academic or intellectual; it's kinesthetic and sensory-a knowingness that pervades every cell of your body ... you experience a transcendent awareness that penetrates your whole being. You truly grasp that energy and consciousness can never be destroyed, only transformed into myriad shapes and forms, one of which happens to be you. — Alberto Villoldo

Shamanism is not a course, but a life journey. — Alberto Villoldo

One can transform a place by reading in it. — Alberto Manguel

An old mind is a thing to fear
The truth, in its purest form is boring
Through comedy, a person can hide his/her shortcomings and reach high ground. — Alberto A. Arcia

Even though his name was Norberto, everybody called him Alberto, except for my grandmother, who called him Alfredo. — Jennifer Arnold

Unicorns, dragons, witches may be creatures conjured up in dreams, but on the page their needs, joys, anguishes, and redemptions should be just as true as those of Madame Bovary or Martin Chuzzlewit. — Alberto Manguel

The love of libraries, like most loves, must be learned. — Alberto Manguel

The government knew a secret that the American public didn't: the numbers of border crossers were down, across the board. Maybe the fence, maybe the harsh new atmosphere — Luis Alberto Urrea

We are just not made up to be middle distance runners. — Alberto Juantorena

All the art of the past rises up before me, the art of all ages and all civilizations, everything becomes simultaneous, as if space had replaced time. Memories of works of art blend with affective memories, with my work, with my whole life. — Alberto Giacometti

The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity. — Alberto Giacometti

And sometimes if I want
To imagine I'm a lamb
(Or a whole flock
Spreading out all over the hillside
So I can be a lot of happy things at the same time),
It's only because I feel what I write at sunset,
Or when a cloud passes its hand over the light
And silence runs over the grass outside.
When I sit and write poems
Or, walking along the roads or pathways,
I write poems on the paper in my thoughts,
I feel a staff in my hand
And see my silhouette
On top of a knoll,
Looking after my flock and seeing my ideas,
Or looking after my ideas and seeing my flock,
With a silly smile like someone who doesn't understand what somebody's saying
But tries to pretend they do. — Alberto Caeiro

Books are our best possessions in life, they are our immortality. — Alberto Manguel

Nothing at all reminds us of something else when we pay attention to it.
Each thing only reminds us of what it is
And it's only what nothing else is.
The fact that it's it separates it from every other thing.
(Everything's nothing without another thing that's not it). — Alberto Caeiro

I run four miles most days, at about 8:00 to 8:15 pace. It's totally relaxed. — Alberto Salazar

I wanted to live among books. — Alberto Manguel

I was born subject like others to errors and defects,
But never to the error of wanting to understand too much,
Never to the error of wanting to understand only with the intellect..
Never to the defect of demanding of the World
That it be anything that's not the World. — Alberto Caeiro

An athlete who tells you the training is always easy and always fun simply hasn't been there. Goals can be elusive which makes the difficult journey all the more rewarding. — Alberto Salazar

I don't regret anything I was before because I still am.
I only regret not having loved you.
Put your hands in mine
And let's be quiet, surrounded by life. — Alberto Caeiro

I remember one woman making paper flowers to sell, with different herbs ... She made them so fast, and so many ... that as I watched, her first few zinnias became quickly enough a few hundred, and grew in their happiness to the size of sunflowers. The sunflowers themselves grew to the size of pumpkins, the snapdragons grew ominous, and the rosemary fragrant. — Alberto Alvaro Rios

Books read in a public library never have the same flavour as books read in the attic or the kitchen. — Alberto Manguel

We can live in a society founded on the book and yet not read, or we can live in a society where the book is merely an accessory and be, in the deepest, truest sense, a reader. — Alberto Manguel

As readers, we are seldom interested in the fine sentiments of a lesson learnt; we seldom care about the good manners of morals. Repentance puts an end to conversation; forgiveness becomes the stuff of moralistic tracts. Revenge - bloodthirsty, justice-hungry revenge - is the very essence of romance, lying at the heart of much of the best fiction. — Alberto Manguel

We can change the world with every thought we have and every word we speak. — Alberto Villoldo

I never took banned substances, but I have been courted by doctors who wanted to improve my blood in the laboratory. My mother always put them on a flight. — Alberto Tomba

graphics should not simplify messages. They should clarify them, highlight trends, uncover patterns, and reveal realities not visible before. — Alberto Cairo

Yes, one uses what one knows, but autobiography means something else. I should never be able to write a real autobiography; I always end by falsifying and fictionalizing - I'm a liar, in fact. That means I'm a novelist, after all. I write about what I know. — Alberto Moravia

It was just spooky ... The Bird-man, the War-man, those guys, and that day we tried to find out something. I don't know if we did, though. Maybe that was the point. Maybe it was something about what's personal. I don't know, but it's lasted a long time. — Alberto Alvaro Rios

Books have long been instruments of the divinatory arts. — Alberto Manguel

Trust me, my runners aren't going to run one event while looking past it to the second event. When they get on the line for the 10K, that's a do-or-die situation for them. — Alberto Salazar

There are no roses in my yard: what wind brought you?
But I suddenly come from far away. I was sick for a moment.
No wind whatsoever brought you now.
Now you're here.
What you were isn't you, or else the whole rose would be here. — Alberto Caeiro

In this job, you're going to make decisions. You'll say things that some people are going to love them, some people are going to hate them. It's just part of the job. — Alberto Gonzales

I'm doing great heart-wise. I get a complete stress test once a year, and those have gone well. I have stents in two arteries, and they are holding up. My other arteries haven't shown any additional clogging. — Alberto Salazar

visualization is not something that happens on a page or on a screen; it happens in the mind — Alberto Cairo

If the library in the morning suggests an echo of the severe and reasonable wishful order of the world, the library at night seems to rejoice in the world's essential, joyful muddle. — Alberto Manguel

I adopt a very simple approach. I observe and reflect real life and ordinary people and sooner or later that raises a laugh. — Alberto Sordi

The marathon is like a bullfight. — Alberto Salazar

December 21, 2012 represents a unique opportunity for renaissance, renewal and reinvention that people have waited for for centuries. — Alberto Villoldo

I am in the earth and the earth is in me — Luis Alberto Urrea

Anyone who attempts anything original in the world must expect a bit of ridicule. — Alberto Juantorena

When we're unaware that we share the power to co-create reality with the universe itself, that power slips away from us, causing our dream to become a nightmare. We begin to feel we're the victims of an unknown and frightening creation that we're unable to influence, and events seem to control and trap us. The only way to end this dreadful reality is to awaken to the fact that it too is a dream - and then recognize our ability to write a better story, one that the universe will work with us to manifest. — Alberto Villoldo

And $18 million in three Japanese banks, completely false. That I have two factories in Panama, also completely false. This is part of the counter campaign of some people. — Alberto Fujimori

And sometimes, when the stars are kind, we read with an intake of breath, with a shudder, as if someone or something had 'walked over our grave,' as if a memory had suddenly been rescued from a place deep within us - the recognition of something we never knew was there, or of something we vaguely felt as a flicker or a shadow, whose ghostly form rises and passes back into us before we can see what it is, leaving us older and wiser. — Alberto Manguel

And we all know love is a glass which makes even a monster appear fascinating. — Alberto Moravia

The sky peeled back for a moment, and a weak ray of sunset spilled over the scene like the diseased eye of some forgetful god
the light bearing with it cold in place of heat. — Luis Alberto Urrea

I'll leave it to others to try to determine whether or not that was unfair or not. I'm not the nominee. — Alberto Gonzales

With imagination, we can hold a universe inside our minds. — Alberto Villoldo

Artistically I am still a child with a whole life ahead of me to discover and create. I want something, but I won't know what it is until I succeed in doing it. — Alberto Giacometti

Our society accepts the book as a given, but the act of reading
once considered useful and important, as well as potentially dangerous and subversive
is now condescendingly accepted as a pastime, a slow pastime that lacks efficiency and does not contribute to the common good. — Alberto Manguel

Papi looked down at the side-view mirror, at the pine branches sticking out from behind the truck, and every time Rocio raised her voice, singing and screaming at the same time, it felt like the front seats were flooding with water. — Mario Alberto Zambrano

In the hall of mirrors, you are everywhere. Which is the real you? Find your original Self, the one who perceives all the reflections and is amused by them. Then you will recognize your path and walk it. — Alberto Villoldo

They say that, if we manage to live without too great an effort, it is entirely owing to the automatism which makes us unconscious of a great part of our movements. In order to take one single step, it seems, we displace an infinite number of muscles, and yet, thanks to this automatism, we are unaware of it. The same thing happens in our relations with other people. — Alberto Moravia

The starting point is a question. — Alberto Manguel

FAIR river! in thy bright, clear flow Of crystal, wandering water, Thou art an emblem of the glow Of beauty - the unhidden heart - The playful maziness of art In old Alberto's daughter; But when within thy wave she looks - Which glistens then, and trembles - Why, then, the prettiest of brooks Her worshipper resembles; For in his heart, as in thy stream, Her image deeply lies - His heart which trembles at the beam Of her soul-searching eyes. — Edgar Allan Poe

I had a library of maybe 1,000 books in my room in Buenos Aires. I did have the sense that everything there was organised in the right way. You'll probably think I needed serious psychiatric treatment, but there were times when I would not buy a book because I knew it wouldn't fit one of the categories into which I had divided the library. — Alberto Manguel

The life of a visual communicator should be one of systematic and exciting intellectual chaos. — Alberto Cairo

Courageous dreaming allows you to create from the source, the quantum soup of the universe where everything exists in a latent or potential state. — Alberto Villoldo

Unless you eat foods clearly marked "Certified organic by the USDA," you are taking part in a genetic experiment that is unprecedented in earth's long history. — Alberto Villoldo

hippocampus damage on a national scale can be measured by the number of guns owned by a country's citizens. According to The Washington Post, the U.S. has the highest per capita gun ownership in the world - nearly 90 guns for every 100 people - and the highest rate of gun-related murders in the developed world.4 The hippocampus senses danger lurking behind every tree. — Alberto Villoldo

I once made the mistake of writing a story with David Corbett. The man smoked me. He can delineate the character and personality of an accordion in three strokes. I didn't even know accordions had character. This act of generosity and wisdom from a very good writer will help anyone who is staring at a blank page, any day, any time. Highly recommended. — Luis Alberto Urrea

In this place that we live
my West, my father's North, and my mother's new hemisphere
rabbits in a burning field of grass can catch on fire. They run to a clear place where there is no fire, but, in doing so, light it up because their fur is burning. That way, in trying to save themselves, they spread the fire more ... And it speeds to everyone. — Alberto Alvaro Rios

I didn't give myself enough breaks during the training year to recover. I didn't understand the power of periodization. — Alberto Salazar

We want to make sure our athletes have a future once their athletics careers are over. — Alberto Juantorena

We need to be aware of all aspects: To check how they travel, how they eat, the competition conditions. — Alberto Juantorena

All deaths, all endings, are a path to the next beginning. — Alberto Villoldo

Cruz made the sign of the cross over them. He hefted his rifle onto his shoulder and walked away. His warriors followed, blessed by the Lord, reconciled, holy in this day He had made, and ready to shoot. — Luis Alberto Urrea

I see something, find it marvelous, want to try and do it. Whether it fails or whether it comes off in the end becomes secondary ... So long as I've learned something about why. — Alberto Giacometti

It would be hard to find a more compelling example of the American dream than Alberto Gonzales. — Jon Kyl

You never know the limit of a human being. — Alberto Juantorena

There is a sea of consciousness that is universal, even though we each perceive it from our own shores, an awareness and a world that we all share, that can be experienced by every living being, yet is seldom seen by any. — Alberto Villoldo

The task is not to search for meaning, but to bring meaning to every situation you are in. — Alberto Villoldo

One day he (Einstein) said that the only mechanical force more powerful than steam, electricity and atomic energy is will. That Alberto bloke was not stupid. With will you can achieve things. — Jose Mourinho

Old or new, the only sign I always try to rid my books of (usually with little success) is the price-sticker that malignant booksellers attach to the backs. These evil white scabs rip off with difficulty, leaving leprous wounds and traces of slime to which adhere the dust and fluff of ages, making me wish for a special gummy hell to which the inventor of these stickers would be condemned. — Alberto Manguel

If I knew I was going to die tomorrow,
And Spring came the day after tomorrow,
I would die peacefully, because it came the day after tomorrow.
If that's its time, when else should it come?
I like it that everything is real and everything is right;
And I like that it would be like this even if I didn't like it.
And so, if I die now, I die peacefully
Because everything is real and everything is right. — Alberto Caeiro

There are those who, while reading a book, recall, compare, conjure up emotions from other, previous readings < ... > This is one of the most delicate forms of adultery. — Alberto Manguel

You can accomplish anything," she once told me, "as long as you are willing to let others take credit for it. — Alberto Villoldo

The river of my village doesn't make you think about anything.
When you're at its bank you're only at its bank. — Alberto Caeiro