Quotessence
Home / Authors / Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno

Miguel de Unamuno Quotes

Novelist

Filter quotes by topic

Famous Miguel de Unamuno Quotes

“And the end of life is to fashion a soul, an immortal soul; a soul of one's own making. Because at the hour of death one bequeaths a skeleton to the earth, but a soul, a piece of work, to history. Or such is the case when one has lived, that is, when one has wrestled with the life that passes, wrestled it for the prize of the life that remains. And life, what is life? Even more tragic, what is truth?”

“Talking to a peasant one day, I suggested to him the hypothesis that there might indeed be a God who governs heaven and earth, a Consciousness or Conscience of the Universe, but that even so it would not be sufficient reason to assume that the soul of every man was immortal in the traditional and concrete sense. And he replied, "Then what good is God?”

“He who loves his neighbor burns his heart, and the heart, like green wood, groans when it burns, and distills itself in tears. There is no point in taking opium; it is better to put salt and vinegar in the soul's wound, for if you fall asleep and no longer feel the pain, then you no longer exist. And the point is to exist.”

“Spiritual Love is born of sorrow. . . . For men love one another with spiritual love only when they have suffered the same sorrow together, when through long days they have ploughed the stony ground buried beneath the common yoke of a common grief. It is then that they know one another and feel one another and feel with one another in their common anguish, and so they pity one another and love one another.”