Sionil Jose Quotes: top 63 famous quotes about Sionil Jose

Sionil Jose Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational Sionil Jose quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.

None will thank me for this, nor anyone will remember.
-Istak — F. Sionil Jose

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

It is what one really owns in the end, a name.
-Istak — F. Sionil Jose

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

In the end, religion teaches us to value truth, justice and freedom. — F. Sionil Jose

Why do people betray their brothers and eventually themselves?
-The Cripple — F. Sionil Jose

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We cannot be rooted in the past forever. We must not be sentimental. — F. Sionil Jose

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. — F. Sionil Jose

I am for poetry that is admired by peasant and aristocrat alike. — F. Sionil Jose

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

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

We write from life and call it literature, and literature lives because we are in it. — F. Sionil Jose

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

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

Contemplation is a luxury of the middle class, the very rich. — F. Sionil Jose

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

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

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

When I wake up every morning, I thank God for the new day. — F. Sionil Jose

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

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

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

We must respect courage wherever we encounter it.
-Tom — F. Sionil Jose

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. — F. Sionil Jose

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 — F. Sionil Jose

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

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. — F. Sionil Jose

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

The Philippines just need 100 youth to stand up for their country — F. Sionil Jose

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. — F. Sionil Jose

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

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. — F. Sionil Jose

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

It is the heart which dictates, which rules, which lets us live and die. — F. Sionil Jose

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

In death, all men are brothers.
-Istak — F. Sionil Jose

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

Forgive those who are ignorant.
-Bit-tik — F. Sionil Jose

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

Time will come that all that we love, we will eventually lose, and all that we hate we will eventually face. — F. Sionil Jose

Who then lives? Who then triumphs when all others have succumbed? — F. Sionil Jose

Ubi boni, malum prosperat (Where good men are silent, evil prospers) — F. Sionil Jose

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

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

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 — F. Sionil Jose

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

It is more difficult for the poor to be virtuous.
-The Cripple — F. Sionil Jose

There is so much that the past can teach us.
-The Cripple — F. Sionil Jose

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

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. — F. Sionil Jose