Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Camilo José Cela

Quote by Camilo José Cela

“Perhaps there is to be found in Pastrana the key to something which happens in Spain more frequently than is necessary. Past splendor overwhelms and in the end exhausts the people's will; and without force of will, as can be seen in so many cases, by being exclusively occupied with the contemplation of the glories of the past, they leave current problems unsolved. When the belly is empty and the mind filled with golden memories, the golden memories continually retreat and at last, though no one goes so far as to admit it, there is even doubt whether they ever existed and there is nothing left of them but a benevolent and useless cultural residue.”

Quote by Camilo José Cela

Create image

Author

Camilo José Cela

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Camilo José Cela. more

You May Also Like

“Inwardly - nobody knows why - the passengers on one train always envy slightly the passengers on another train; it is something that's true but a little difficult to explain. Maybe it's because, even though they don't realize it very clearly, a third-class passenger would always be glad to change places with another, even if the other were third-class too. ― Camilo José Cela, Journey to the Alcarria: Travels Through the Spanish Countryside”

TravelogueFlaneur
Book:Journey to the Alcarria: Travels through the Spanish Countryside
Create image

“The fascination of the July Monarchy public with lithographic albums was intimately related to the popularity of the travelogue, which constituted an important literary form at the time. Professional travelers and scientists as well as many of the major writers of the period dedicated themselves to this genre. Stendhal’s Promenades dans Rome (1829) and his Memoires d'un touriste (1838); Alphonse de Lamartine’s Voyage en Orient (1832-1833); Victor Hugo’s Rhin (1842); George Sand’s Lettres d'un voyageur (1834-1836); Theophile Gautier’s Tour en Belgique (1836) and his Tra los Montes (1843); and Alexandre Dumas’s Quinze jours au Sinai are some of the outstanding examples of the travelogues published in the 1830s and 1840s.”

Travelogue
Book:The Art of the July Monarchy: France, 1830 to 1848
Create image

“I love wide stretches of open land, but to the average Spaniard, who typically thrives in company and is most at home in a crowd, these fields of Extremadura (which literally means “extremely tough”) could even be intimidating, only partly because not far back in time there were bandits in the region. They were named as the ‘extreme’ end of the country. If it is at least not totally empty, there is certainly a sense of that great lonesome feeling created by the far-off, long, long line at which the earth's surface and the sky meet: a pleasant melancholy of an imagined solitary truck crawling across a plain, the ancestral memory of a caravan trail or a child’s drawing of a single emblematic tree on a small hill.”

TravelEuropeSpainTravelersTrainsTravelogueNonfictiont
Book:Slow Travels in Unsung Spain
Create image

“As I was a stranger in Olondria, I knew nothing of the splendour of its coasts, nor of Bain, the Harbour City, whose lights and colours spill into the ocean like a cataract of roses. I did not know the vastness of the spice markets of Bain, where the merchants are delirious with scents, I had never seen the morning mists adrift above the surface of the green Illoun, of which the poets sing; I had never seen a woman with gems in her hair, nor observed the copper glinting of the domes, nor stood upon the melancholy beaches of the south while the wind brought in the sadness from the sea. Deep within the Fayaleith, the Country of the Wines, the clarity of light can stop the heart: it is the light the local people call 'the breath of angels'...”

Travelogue
Book:A Stranger in Olondria
Create image