Alvaro Quotes & Sayings

I will protect all Colombians regardless of whether the attacks come from guerrillas or paramilitaries. — Alvaro Uribe

When I get the morning report on security, I call those battalions in the regions where there are problems. — Alvaro Uribe

The combination of mental and physical practice leads to greater performance improvement than does physical practice alone, a phenomenon for which our findings provide a physiological explanation. - Alvaro Pascual-Leone — Oliver Sacks

Do I believe a thing has limits!? Of course! Nothing exists that doesn't have limits. Existence means there's always something else, and so everything has limits. Why is it so hard to conceive that a thing is a thing, and that it isn't always being some other thing that's beyond it?"

At that moment I felt in my bones not that I was talking to a man, but to another universe. I tried one last time, from another angle, which I felt compelled to consider legitimate.

"Look, Caeiro... think about numbers... Where do they end? Take any number - say 34. Past it we have 35, 36, 37, 38 - there can be no end to it. There is no number so big that there is no number larger..."

"But that's just numbers," protested my master Caeiro.

And then, looking at me out of his formidable, childlike eyes:

"What is 34 in Reality, anyway? — Alvaro De Campos

Tunisia is extremely dependent on economic conditions in Europe, which is why it also experienced shockwaves from the euro crisis. — Alvaro De Vasconcelos

His conception of the universe is, however, instinctive, not intellectual; it can't be criticized as a concept, because there's none there, and it can't be criticized as temperament, because temperament can't be criticized. — Alvaro De Campos

Since a good part of my life has been wasted dealing with fools just like them, it's not worry I feel but weariness as I watch the approach of one more episode in the old, tired story of men who try to beat life, the smart ones who think they know it all and die with a look of surprise on their faces: at the final moment they always see the truth - they never really understood anything, never held anything in their hands. An old story, old and boring. — Alvaro Mutis

in exceptional circumstances - exceptional in that all circumstances in life are exceptional, especially those which are nothing in themselves and come to be everything in their results. — Alvaro De Campos

he woman Caeiro fell in love with. I have no idea who she was, and I intend to never find out, not even out of curiosity. There are things of which the soul refuses to lose its ignorance.

I'm perfectly aware no one's obliged to reciprocate love, and great poets have nothing to do with being great lovers. But there's a transcendent spite...

Let her remain anonymous even to God! — Alvaro De Campos

His bread incident was just like my own story of getting run over. I didn't get hurt, exactly, though I did get to see the underside of something I thought I knew but I didn't. My father and I, in our turn, got to see something new in the middle of what was absolutely familiar, which is the hardest place to see it. Neither of us ever forgot. — Alberto Alvaro Rios

Adults have
the benefit of experience and know the trick will work as long as the technique is correct.
When we "grow up" we gain this experience and knowledge, but we lose our innocence and
sense of wonder. In other words, the price we pay for growing up is a permanent sense of
loss. — Alberto Alvaro Rios

But what you're calling poetry is what everything is. It's not even poetry - it's seeing. These materialists are blind. You told me they say space is infinite. Where do they see that in space?"

And I, disconcerted: "But don't you think of space as infinite? Can't you conceive of space as infinite?"

"I don't conceive of anything as being infinite. How could I conceive of anything as being infinite?"

"But, man," I said, "Imagine space. Beyond that space is more space, and beyond that more, and then more, and more... It never ends..."

"Why?" asked my master Caeiro. — Alvaro De Campos

Nothing: a landscape, a glass of wine, a little loveless love, and the vague sadness caused by our understanding nothing and having lost the little we're given. — Alvaro De Campos

The curious measure, of course, is that we fail to recognize the most obvious notion in all of this: that we ourselves are the best magicians we know. What our bodies do, what our minds accomplish, and the context we can give to things, how we make it all fit together, this is something. — Alberto Alvaro Rios

Life with Ilona was invariably lived on two levels, or rather in two simultaneous and parallel directions. On the one hand, your feet were always on the ground, you were always intelligently but not obsessively alert to what each day offered in response to the routine question of surviving. On the other hand, imagination and unbounded fantasy suggested a spontaneous and unexpected sequence of scenarios that were always aimed at the radical subversion of every law ever written or established. This was a permanent, organic, rigorous subversion that never permitted travel on the beaten path, the road preferred by most people, the traditional patterns that offer protection to those whom Ilona, without emphasis or pride but without any concessions either, would call "the others. — Alvaro Mutis

We live in secret cities
And we travel unmapped roads.

We speak words between us that we recognize
But which cannot be looked up.

They are our words.
They come from very far inside our mouths.

You and I, we are the secret citizens of the city
Inside us, and inside us

There go all the cars we have driven
And seen, there are all the people

We know and have known, there
Are all the places that are

But which used to be as well. This is where
They went. They did not disappear.

We each take a piece
Through the eye and through the ear.

It's loud inside us, in there, and when we speak
In the outside world

We have to hope that some of that sound
Does not come out, that an arm

Not reach out
In place of the tongue. — Alberto Alvaro Rios

When you review the Central American wars or other Latin American wars, you find that there were dictators and there were insurgents. — Alvaro Uribe

I always want to be the thing I feel kinship with...
To feel everything in every way,
To hold all opinions,
To be sincere contradicting oneself every minute... — Alvaro De Campos

The Amorous Shepherd is a fruitless interlude, but those few poems are among the world's greatest love poems, because they're love poems about love, not about being poems. The poet loves because he loves, not because love exists. — Alvaro De Campos

Seven o'clock and you watched it and then you turned it off. The Fifties. It's like that in movies and television programs, but its plot there. The characters get some information from the newscaster and then they turn it off so they can speak. But we were the characters then. We still are, I guess, so it's only a matter of time before we start seeing television shows where the people turn on the news to get some information and then, instead of turning it off so they can speak, they leave it on, and we get swept into some endless video vortex, some film loop, which has us by the eyes and won't let us go. — Alberto Alvaro Rios

No one can feel as the owner of the country and no one can feel excluded from the right of property. We must all suffer Colombia. — Alvaro Uribe

For security you need more soldiers, you need more policemen, you need more vehicles, you need more planes, you need more guns, you need more communications. — Alvaro Uribe

He possesses the minimum sensibility necessary for his intelligence not to be merely mathematical, the minimum a human being needs so that it can be proven with a thermometer that he's not dead. — Alvaro De Campos

The underlying reason for this is the Europeans' fear that Islamists could gain power. Many still consider authoritarian Arab regimes to be the lesser evil. — Alvaro De Vasconcelos

Sebastian then turned to the redhead. I didn't want to know her name. I already had a perfectly fitting nickname for her in my head. "This is Selena Alvaro." "Please call me Lena," the girl smiled, extending a manicured hand. I shook it politely. Whatever Sebastian's issue was, I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of showing that I cared. "Do you know Bast well?" she asked me.
Ugh. That nickname again. "I guess not," I replied curtly, shooting him a pointed look. "He's just one of the vampires in town. — Ada Adams

I don't believe in anything but the existence of my sensations; I have no other certainty, not even of the outer universe conveyed to me by those sensations. I don't see the outer universe, I don't hear the outer universe, I don't touch the outer universe. I see my visual impressions; I hear my auditory impressions; I touch my tactile impressions. It's not with the eyes but with the soul that I see; it's not with the ears but with the soul that I hear; it's not with the skin but with the soul that I touch.
And if someone should ask me what the soul is, I'll answer that it's me. — Alvaro De Campos

Some things come too soon and others come too late, but we only find out when there's nothing to be done, when we've already bet against ourselves. — Alvaro Mutis

I just want to serve Colombia. — Alvaro Uribe

But I was in this bowling league with a good number of friends who came from across the line. We got the phone call that the border had been closed, and that absolutely nobody was being allowed to cross
not parents, not children, not anybody. Who knew what disguise the assassin had used. — Alberto Alvaro Rios

Weather is a purely personal matter. There is no such thing as a climate that is cold or hot, good or bad, healthy or unhealthy. People take it upon themselves to create a fantasy in their imagination and call it weather. There's only one climate in the world, but the message that nature sends is interpreted according to strictly personal, non-transferable rules. — Alvaro Mutis

Tradition is a challenge to innovation.. — Alvaro Siza Vieira

I consider a dream like I consider a shadow," answered Caeiro, with his usual divine, unexpected promptitude. "A shadow is real, but it's less real than a rock. A dream is real - if it weren't, it wouldn't be a dream - but less real than a thing. That's what being real is like. — Alvaro De Campos

The Day of the Dead is, in fact, a day of sadness. But it is not a day of regret. I think we're all at work sorting our calendars out. What it is, is that sometimes as human beings we just simply feel something. That feeling has value. That's what holidays are. That's what this day and others like it are about. — Alberto Alvaro Rios

In the name of justice there cannot be subjection and in the name of peace there cannot be impunity. — Alvaro Uribe

Life attacks us like a blind beast. It swallows up time, the years of our life, it passes like a typhoon and leaves nothing behind. Not even memory, because memory is made of the same swift, ungraspable substance out of which illusions emerge and then disappear. — Alvaro Mutis

I suddenly asked my master Caeiro, "Are you at peace with yourself?" and he answered, "No, I'm at peace." It was like the voice of the earth, which is everything and no one. — Alvaro De Campos

Superior poets say what they really feel. Mediocre poets say what they decide to feel. Inferior poets say what they think they should feel. — Alvaro De Campos

My mother had heard all about miniskirts but had never seen one so I took her for lunch at Alvaro's [in Chelsea]. We walked down the King's Road and waited 10 seconds for our first miniskirt and a girl came along with her skirt tucked round her arse. I said: 'What do you think, ma?' And she said: 'If it's not for sale, you shouldn't put it in the window!' — Michael Caine

Every design is a rigorous attempt to capture a concrete moment of a transitory image in all its nuances. The extent to which this transitory quality is captured, is reflected in the designs: the more precise they are, the more vulnerable. — Alvaro Siza Vieira

On land I have too much time, I'm overwhelmed by a boredom that eventually paralyzes me. But this isn't really the main reason for my suicide. Even if I had another chance to go to sea, I know that for a long time I've been storing up something I can only define as a weariness with being alive, with having to choose between one thing and another, with listening to people around me talk about things that basically don't interest them, that they really know nothing about. The foolishness of our fellow humans knows no bounds, my dear Gaviero. If it didn't sound absurd, I'd say I'm leaving because I can't stand the noise the living make. — Alvaro Mutis

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

It's wrong to focus only on economic cooperation and then to hope that a sufficiently stable system will become democratic more or less by itself. The EU needs to urge its neighbors to pursue both economic stability and political modernization in equal measures. — Alvaro De Vasconcelos

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

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

Of course former colonial powers are always more present and influential. They're the ones who need to defend the EU's values on the frontlines. — Alvaro De Vasconcelos

and the idea of nothingness - the most terrifying of all ideas, when thought of with feeling - has, in my dear master's work and in my memories of him, something as high and luminous as sunlight upon snowy, unscalable peaks. — Alvaro De Campos

the Great Vaccination - the vaccination against the stupidity of the intelligentsia. — Alvaro De Campos

Crossing over from Mexico to the United States was a big step, but that part was easy. Big things are like that
easy to identify, and, with a deep breath, done all at once. As life turned out, it was the small that was difficult. The small things
which is all the opposite of what one might think. — Alberto Alvaro Rios

But it was not just my grandmother there waiting for her husband to come home happy or dead. The side stories of revolution were there in Tapachula, a whole town of displaced people put on hold, taken out of time, not so different from the Nogales in which I was raised ... they were towns next to countries, but inside countries as well. — Alberto Alvaro Rios

2There is no greater thing in life than that secret sense of harmony that unites us briefly with the great mysteries of others and allows us to travel alongside them for part of the way. — Alvaro Mutis

Life always holds in store surprises that are more complex and unforeseeable than any dream, and the secret is to let them come and not block them with castles in the air. — Alvaro Mutis

Political Islam is not a homogeneous bloc. — Alvaro De Vasconcelos

When it comes to France, it seems to me the fundamental question is how a former colonial power should interact with its former colony. — Alvaro De Vasconcelos

Everything changed when I met the girl. She penetrated a corner of my soul that had been kept sealed and even I didn't know was there. With her gestures, the scent of her skin, her sudden, intense glances that filled me with overwhelming tenderness, with her dependence that was a kind of unthinking, absolute acceptance, she could rescue me instantly from my confusions and obsessions, my discouragement and failure, or my simple daily routine, and leave me inside a radiant circle made of throbbing energy and powerful certainty, like the effects of an unknown drug that produces unconditional happiness. — Alvaro Mutis

It's stupid, but it's human, and that's how it is. — Alvaro De Campos

The basic dream of many Colombians is to have a secure nation, without exclusions, with equity, and without hatred. — Alvaro Uribe

Every child likes to take a pencil to make a mark. Everybody makes beautiful things when they are three, four, or five years old. Most people lose that spontaneity; I think that always happens. Some are able to win a second spontaneity. — Alvaro Siza

He had a ponytail. But this was not a regular ponytail from the Sixties, not a ponytail for show or for fashion. It was more. It was a personal ponytail, something more defining and lasting. A personal thing is different, and all the books and all the magazines in the world can't tell you what that is. — Alberto Alvaro Rios

What do you want, Alvaro?
- Kristine
Ikaw. Marry me.
- Alvaro — Martha Cecilia