F. Sionil Jose Quotes
Top 63 wise famous quotes and sayings by F. Sionil Jose
F. Sionil Jose Famous Quotes & Sayings
Discover top inspirational quotes from F. Sionil Jose on Wise Famous Quotes.
You will be surprised how much punishment the human body can take, if there is enough will - or faith.
But like my father, I have not done anything. I could not, because I am me, because I died long ago.
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.
Writers are historians, too. It is in literature that the greater truths about a people and their past are found.
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.
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
-Old David
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
-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
-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.
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
-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.
only a price.
Indeed time has that ultimate capacity to render the passions of the past when recalled in the present as no more than grandiloquent gestures.
Literature - Eastern and Western - abounds with stories, myths, legends about the search for youth, for eternal life.
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.
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.