# One Hundred Years of Solitude

- Author: [Gabriel Garcia Marquez](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gabriel-garcia-marquez.md)
- Quotes: 26
- Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/gabriel-garcia-marquez/one-hundred-years-of-solitude

## Quotes

> One minute of reconciliation is worth more than a whole life of friendship.

p. 337 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gabriel-garcia-marquez/one-hundred-years-of-solitude/one-minute-of-reconciliation.md)

> When the pirate Sir Francis Drake attacked Riohacha in the sixteenth century, Úrsula Iguarán's great-great-grandmother became so frightened with the ringing of alarm bells and the firing of cannons that she lost control of her nerves and sat down on a lighted stove. The burns changed her into a useless wife for the rest of her days. [ . . . ] Her husband, an Aragonese merchant by whom she had two children, spent half the value of his store on medicines and pastimes in an attempt to alleviate her terror. Finally he sold the business and took the family to live far from the sea in a settlement of peaceful Indians [ . . . ] Several centuries later the great-great-grandson of the native-born planter married the great-great-granddaughter of the Aragonese. Therefore, every time that Úrsula became exercised over her husband’s mad ideas, she would leap back over three hundred years of fate and curse the day that Sir Francis Drake had attacked Riohacha.

p. 30 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gabriel-garcia-marquez/one-hundred-years-of-solitude/when-the-pirate.md)

> Aureliano gave her a look that wrapped her in an atmosphere of uncertainty.
>
> "Somebody is coming," he told her.
>
> Úrsula, as she did whenever he made a prediction, tried to break it down with her housewifely logic. It was normal for someone to be coming.

p. 55 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gabriel-garcia-marquez/one-hundred-years-of-solitude/aureliano-gave-her.md)

> “What did you expect?” he murmured. “Time passes.”
>
> “That’s how it goes,” Úrsula said, “but not so much.”
>
> When she said it she realized that she was giving the same reply that Colonel Aureliano Buendía had given in his death cell, and once again she shuddered with the evidence that time was not passing, as she had just admitted, but that it was turning in a circle.

p. 399 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gabriel-garcia-marquez/one-hundred-years-of-solitude/what-did-you.md)

> [Pilar Ternera's] five daughters, who inherited a burning seed, had been lost on the byways of life since adolescence. Of the two sons she managed to raise, one died fighting in the forces of Colonel Aureliano Buendía and the other was wounded and captured at the age of fourteen when he tried to steal a crate of chickens in a town in the swamp. In a certain way, Aureliano José was the tall, dark man who had been promised her for half a century by the king of hearts, and like all men sent by the cards he reached her heart when he was already stamped with the mark of death. She saw it in the cards.

p. 188 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gabriel-garcia-marquez/one-hundred-years-of-solitude/pilar-terneras-five.md)

> Lost in the solitude of his immense power, he began to lose direction. He was bothered by the people who cheered him in neighboring villages, and he imagined that they were the same cheers they gave the enemy. Everywhere he met adolescents who looked at him with his own eyes, who spoke to him with his own voice, who greeted him with the same mistrust with which he greeted them, and who said they were his sons. He felt scattered about, multiplied, and more solitary than ever. He was convinced that his own officers were lying to him. He fought with the Duke of Marlborough. "The best friend a person has," he would say at that time, "is one who has just died."

p. 203 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gabriel-garcia-marquez/one-hundred-years-of-solitude/lost-in-the.md)

> The secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude.

p. 242 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gabriel-garcia-marquez/one-hundred-years-of-solitude/the-secret-of-a-good.md)

> The anxiety of falling in love could not find repose except in bed.

p. 346 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gabriel-garcia-marquez/one-hundred-years-of-solitude/the-anxiety-of-falling.md)

> Then he [José Arcadio (II)] gave himself over to that hand [Pilar Ternera's], and in a terrible state of exhaustion he let himself be led to a shapeless place where his clothes were taken off and he was heaved about like a sack of potatoes and thrown from one side to the other in a bottomless darkness in which his arms were useless, where it no longer smelled of woman but of ammonia, and where he tried to remember her face and found before him the face of Úrsula, confusedly aware that he was doing something that for a very long time he had wanted to do but that he had imagined could really never be done, not knowing what he was doing because he did not know where his feet were or where his head was, or whose feet or whose head, and feeling that he could no longer resist the glacial rumbling of his kidneys and the air of his intestines, and fear, and the bewildered anxiety to flee and at the same time stay forever and ever in that exasperated silence and that fearful solitude.

p. 40 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gabriel-garcia-marquez/one-hundred-years-of-solitude/then-he-jose.md)

> In reality, they did not dare carry out the sentence. The rebelliousness of the town made the military men think that the execution of Colonel Aureliano Buendía might have serious political consequences not only in Macondo but throughout the area of the swamp, so they consulted the authorities in the capital of the province. On Saturday night, while they were waiting for an answer. Captain Roque Carnicero went with some other officers to Catarino's place. Only one woman, practically threatened, dared take him to her room. "They don't want to go to bed with a man they know is going to die," she confessed to him. "No one knows how it will come, but everybody is going around saying that the officer who shoots Colonel Aureliano Buendía and all the soldiers in the squad, one by one, will be murdered, with no escape, sooner or later, even if they hide at the ends of the earth." Captain Roque Carnicero mentioned it to the other officers and they told their superiors. On Sunday, although no one had revealed it openly, although no action on the part of the military had disturbed the tense calm of those days, the whole town knew that the officers were ready to use any manner of pretext to avoid responsibility for the execution.
>
> […]
>
> When [Colonel Aureliano Buendía] heard the shout he thought that it was the final command to the squad. He opened his eyes with a shudder of curiosity, expecting to meet the incandescent trajectory of the bullets. But he only saw Captain Roque Carnicero with his arms in the air and José Arcadio crossing the street with his fearsome shotgun ready to go off. "Don't shoot," the captain said to José Arcadio. "You were sent by Divine Providence."

p. 157 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gabriel-garcia-marquez/one-hundred-years-of-solitude/in-reality-they.md)

> When Úrsula realized that José Arcadio Segundo was a cockfight man and that Aureliano Segundo played the accordion at his concubine's noisy parties, she thought she would go mad with the combination. It was as if the defects of the family and none of the virtues had been concentrated in both. Then she decided that no one again would be called Aureliano or José Arcadio. Yet when Aureliano Segundo had his first son she did not dare go against his will.
>
> "All right," Úrsula said, "but on one condition: I will bring him up."
>
> Although she was already a hundred years old and on the point of going blind from cataracts, she still had her physical dynamism, her integrity of character, and her mental balance intact. No one would be better able than she to shape the virtuous man who would restore the prestige of the family, a man who would never have heard talk of war, fighting cocks, bad women, or wild undertakings, four calamities that, according to what Úrsula thought, had determined the downfall of the line. "This one will be a priest," she promised solemnly. "And if God gives me life he'll be Pope someday."

p. 229 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gabriel-garcia-marquez/one-hundred-years-of-solitude/when-ursula-realized.md)

> A person doesn't die when he should but when he can.

p. 292 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gabriel-garcia-marquez/one-hundred-years-of-solitude/a-person-doesnt.md)

> "Shit!" she shouted.
>
> Amaranta, who was starting to put the clothes into the trunk, thought that she had been bitten by a scorpion.
>
> "Where is it?" she asked in alarm.
>
> "What?"
>
> "The bug!" Amaranta said.
>
> Úrsula put a finger on her heart.
>
> "Here," she said.

p. 303 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gabriel-garcia-marquez/one-hundred-years-of-solitude/shit-she-shouted.md)

> Many years later as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point.

p. 1 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gabriel-garcia-marquez/one-hundred-years-of-solitude/many-years-later.md)

> At dawn, worn out by the tormented vigil, he appeared in the cell an hour before the execution. "The farce is over, old friend," he said to Colonel Gerineldo Marquez. "Let's get out of here before the mosquitos in here execute you." Colonel Gerineldo Marquez could not express the disdain that was inspired in him by that attitude.
>
> "No, Aureliano," he replied. "I'd rather be dead than see you changed into a tyrant."
>
> "You won't see me," Colonel Aureliano Buendía said. "Put your shoes and help me get this shitty war over with."
>
> When he said it he did not know that it was easier to start a war than to end one.

p. 207 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gabriel-garcia-marquez/one-hundred-years-of-solitude/at-dawn-worn.md)

> "A person fucks himself up so much," Colonel Aureliano Buendía said, "Fucks himself up so much just so that six weak fairies can kill him and he can't do anything about it."

p. 158 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gabriel-garcia-marquez/one-hundred-years-of-solitude/a-person-fucks.md)

> The world was reduced to the surface of her skin and her inner self was safe from all bitterness.

p. 334 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gabriel-garcia-marquez/one-hundred-years-of-solitude/the-world-was.md)

> The presence of Amparo Moscote in the house was like a premonition. "She has to come with her," Aureliano would say to himself in a low voice. "She has to come." He repeated it so many times and with such conviction that one afternoon when he was putting together a little gold fish in the workshop, he had the certainty that she had answered his call. Indeed, a short time later he heard the childish voice, and when he looked up his heart froze with terror as he saw the girl [Remedios] at the door, dressed in pink organdy and wearing white boots.

p. 84 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gabriel-garcia-marquez/one-hundred-years-of-solitude/the-presence-of-amparo.md)

> The city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.

p. 495 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gabriel-garcia-marquez/one-hundred-years-of-solitude/the-city-of-mirrors.md)

> Carmelita Montiel, a twenty-year-old virgin, had just bathed in orange-blossom water and was strewing rosemary leaves over Pilar Ternera's bed when the shot rang out. Aureliano Jose had been destined to find with her the happiness that Amaranta had denied him, to have seven children, and to die in her arms of old age, but the bullet that entered his chest had been directed by a wrong interpretation of the cards.

p. 189 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gabriel-garcia-marquez/one-hundred-years-of-solitude/carmelita-montiel-a-twenty-year-old.md)

> In that Macondo forgotten even by the birds, where the dust and the heat had become so strong that it was difficult to breathe, secluded by solitude and love and by the solitude of love in a house where it was almost impossible to sleep because of the noise of the red ants, Aureliano, and Amaranta Úrsula were the only happy beings, and the most happy on the face of the earth.

p. 480 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gabriel-garcia-marquez/one-hundred-years-of-solitude/in-that-macondo.md)

> He imposed obligatory military service for men over eighteen, declared to be public property any animals walking the streets after six in the evening, and made men who were overage wear red armbands. He sequestered Father Nicanor in the parish house under pain of execution and prohibited him from saying mass or ringing the bells unless it was for a Liberal victory. In order that no one would doubt the severity of his aims, he ordered a firing squad organized in the square and had it shoot a scarecrow. At first no one took him seriously.

p. 130 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gabriel-garcia-marquez/one-hundred-years-of-solitude/he-imposed-obligatory.md)

> When he finished the book, in which many of the stories had no endings because there were pages missing, Aureliano Segundo set about deciphering the manuscripts. It was impossible. The letters looked like clothes hung out to dry on a line and they looked more like musical notation than writing. One hot noontime, while he was poring over the manuscripts, he sensed that he was not alone in the room. Against the light from the window, sitting with his hands on his knees, was Melquíades. He was under forty years of age. He was wearing the same old-fashioned vest and the hat that looked like a raven's wings, and across his pale temples there flowed the grease from his hair that had been melted by the heat, just as Aureliano and José Arcadio had seen him when they were children. Aureliano Segundo recognized him at once, because that hereditary memory had been transmitted from generation to generation and had come to him through the memory of his grandfather.

p. 224 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gabriel-garcia-marquez/one-hundred-years-of-solitude/when-he-finished.md)

> He had not stopped desiring her for a single instant. He found her in the dark bedrooms of captured towns, especially in the most abject ones, and he would make her materialize in the smell of dry blood on the bandages of the wounded, in the instantaneous terror of the danger of death, at all times and in all places. He had fled from her in an attempt to wipe out her memory, not only through distance but by means of a muddled fury that his companions at arms took to be boldness, but the more her image wallowed in the dunghill of war, the more the war resembled Amaranta. That was how he suffered in exile, looking for a way of killing her with his own death.

p. 182 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gabriel-garcia-marquez/one-hundred-years-of-solitude/he-had-not.md)

> In the shattered schoolhouse where for the first time he had felt the security of power, a few feet from the room where he had come to know the uncertainty of love, Arcadio found the formality of death ridiculous. Death really did not matter to him but life did and therefore the sensation he felt when they gave their decision was not a feeling of fear but of nostalgia. He did not speak until they asked him for his last request.

p. 148 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gabriel-garcia-marquez/one-hundred-years-of-solitude/in-the-shattered.md)

> While [Aureliano Segundo] was shut up in Melquíades room he was drawn into himself, like how Coronel Aurelian Buendía had been in his youth. But just before the treaty of Neerlandia a piece of chance took him out of his withdrawn self and made him face the reality of the world. A young woman who was selling numbers for the raffle of an accordion greeted him with a great deal of familiarity. Aureliano Segundo was not surprised, for he was frequently confused with his brother. But he did not clear up the mistake, not even when the girl tried to soften his heart with sobs, and she ended taking him to her room. […] Aureliano Segundo realized that the woman had been going to bed alternately with him and his brother, thinking that they were the same man, and instead of making things clear, he arranged to prolong the situation. He did not return to Melquíades' room. […]
>
> For almost two months he shared the woman with his brother.[…] One morning he discovered that he was sick. Two days later he found his brother clinging to a beam in the bathroom. […] José Arcadio Segundo did not see the woman again. Aureliano Segundo obtained her pardon and stayed with her until his death.

p. 228 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/gabriel-garcia-marquez/one-hundred-years-of-solitude/while-aureliano-segundo.md)