F. Sionil Jose quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by F. Sionil Jose

F. Sionil Jose Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from F. Sionil Jose on Wise Famous Quotes.

None will thank me for this, nor anyone will remember.
-Istak

You will be surprised how much punishment the human body can take, if there is enough will - or faith.

It is what one really owns in the end, a name.
-Istak

But like my father, I have not done anything. I could not, because I am me, because I died long ago.

In the end, religion teaches us to value truth, justice and freedom.

Why do people betray their brothers and eventually themselves?
-The Cripple

Self-respect, the value of 'face,' is universal but is most pronounced in China, then in Japan where the Confucian ethic is most influential.

I think that I was born on a day God was fast asleep. And whatever happened after my birth was nothing but dreamless ignorance.

What most readers do not realize is that it takes a particular genius to write funny, to satirize.

I regret that I have not written more, shouted louder, and acted out my beliefs.

Writers are historians, too. It is in literature that the greater truths about a people and their past are found.

Always remember: the alleviation of poverty is never a political or economic issue - it is moral.

What is needed in the theater, in fact for all our art forms, is a vibrant critical tradition.

We cannot be rooted in the past forever. We must not be sentimental.

We recognize the distinctness of Asian art when we turn to its traditional forms, recognize it as Japanese, Chinese and Indian, even Balinese or Thai.

I am for poetry that is admired by peasant and aristocrat alike.

The bravest are usually those whom we do not know or hear about, those anonymous men who dig the trenches, who produce the food.

There is nothing like the land you belong to claiming you back. But everywhere the earth is the same.
-Old David

We write from life and call it literature, and literature lives because we are in it.

A weak people and its equally debilitated leaders are bludgeoned by history. It maims them into the cripples that they are meant to be.

I was a senior high school student at the Far Eastern University when the war with Japan broke out in 1941.

Contemplation is a luxury of the middle class, the very rich.

The importance not just of history, but of roots - that a writer must have then to nurture, to remember if he is to endure.

If we could only learn to trust one another
Tagalogs trusting Ilokanos, Pampangos trusting Tagalogs.
-The Cripple

Class - or the economic status of individuals - is evident in all societies, some very well stratified by a rigid caste system determined by birth.

When I wake up every morning, I thank God for the new day.

I tell young people who ask me about a future in writing not to go into it unless they get married to someone rich.

Absences can also make one forget. Absence dulls the memory and banishes those who are precious from the mind.

But all men die
as anonymously as they had lived, no matter what their achievements.
-Istak

We must respect courage wherever we encounter it.
-Tom

It has always been the many faceless men, those foot soldiers, who have suffered most, who have died. It is they who make a nation.

Of course, we are all egoists. Egoism is so much a part of our humanity.

The Japanese covet important symbols - their heroic past as enshrined in Yasukuni, the Imperial family which has never been sullied by scandal.

Literature suffers because writers give their books to colleagues who will then write glowing reviews or saccharine introductions.

Virtue and wealth seldom go together. The greatest criminals are also the wealthiest men."
-The Cripple

But a nation which has people who can think, the nation already has strength. It is the mind which rules, not instinct or habit.

The mind can also be kind and does blot out those episodes of our existence that we can't erase in our consciousness.

But when will Filipinas ever be free from its leaders who are wealthy and crooked, in whom we have put so much trust?
-The Cripple

Tourists as well as natives want to see cultural achievements - whether it's the Banaue Terraces, the old churches or museums.

Just because you have so much to give does not mean that they'll all be accepted. There's more to giving than just giving.

I do not want to be bored listening to music that is muffled and known only to the poet himself.

The Philippines just need 100 youth to stand up for their country

The past could liberate or imprison - it creates a nation's character, provides the nourishment or the poison a people imbibe in their very marrow.

No stranger can come battering down my door and say he brings me light. This I have within me.
-Istak

So honesty then and service are rewarded by banishment and people sell themselves without so much ado because they have no beliefs
only a price.

My reading of philosophy and history is desultory; I know so much and yet so little.

It is the heart which dictates, which rules, which lets us live and die.

Indeed time has that ultimate capacity to render the passions of the past when recalled in the present as no more than grandiloquent gestures.

In death, all men are brothers.
-Istak

Literature - Eastern and Western - abounds with stories, myths, legends about the search for youth, for eternal life.

Forgive those who are ignorant.
-Bit-tik

For them who delay aging, who infuse decrepit bodies with youth and beauty - they must rejoice in the fullness of their deeds.

Time will come that all that we love, we will eventually lose, and all that we hate we will eventually face.

Who then lives? Who then triumphs when all others have succumbed?

Ubi boni, malum prosperat (Where good men are silent, evil prospers)

Poetry is emotion, passion, love, grief - everything that is human. It is not for zombies by zombies.

The literary depiction of life and its moral dilemmas compel us to use our conscience, to make those infallible distinctions between right and wrong.

You will find that our enemies are our own kin. It is they who betray us. So learn this most important lesson-in the end, our worst enemy is ourselves

All dictators, the rich and famous, to the lowest security guard who holds a gun, easily forget that power is transitory.

It is more difficult for the poor to be virtuous.
-The Cripple

There is so much that the past can teach us.
-The Cripple

Ninoy Aquino was a friend; I knew his faults, which were outweighed by his virtues.

I was born in an Ilokano village called Cabugawan. Most of the houses in it were roofed with thatch, pan-aw, a species of wild grass.