The House of the Spirits

Quotes

1. The coup gave them a chance to put into practice what they had learned in their barracks: blind obedience, the use of arms, and other skills that soldiers can master once they silence the scruples of their hearts. (p436)

2. 

   "My son, the Holy Church is on the right, but Jesus Christ was always on the left.” (p182)

3. 

   ...and on the date stipulated by law the left calmly came to power. And on that date the right began to stockpile hatred. (p392)

4. 

   Blanca argued that her reading should be monitored because there were certain things that were inappropriate for her age, but her Uncle Jaime felt that people never read what did not interest them and that if it interested them that meant they were sufficiently mature to read it. (p311)

5. 

   The Poet’s funeral had turned into the symbolic burial of freedom. (p441)

6. 

   ...Captain Longfellow—who, like most Englishmen, was kinder to animals than to people... (p31)

7. 

   She felt that everything was made of glass, as fragile as a sigh... (p430)

8. 

   “This is to assuage our conscience, darling" she would explain to Blanca. "But it doesn't help the poor. They don't need charity; they need justice” (p162)

9. 

   He felt that Christianity, like almost all forms of superstition, made men weaker and more resigned, and that the point was not to await some reward in the sky but to fight for one’s rights on earth. (p255)

10. 

    "Public opinion wouldn’t stand for it,” Gómez replied. “This is a democracy. It’s not a dictatorship and it never will be.” “We always think things like that only happen elsewhere,” said Miguel, “until they happen to us too.” (p367)

11. 

    I told her she had run an enormous risk rescuing me, and she smiled. It was then I understood that the days of Colonel Garcia and all those like him are numbered, because they have not been able to destroy the spirit of these women. (p487)

12. 

    The man and the little girl looked at each other, recognizing themselves in the other’s eyes. (p319)

13. 

    Barrabás came to us by sea, the child Clara wrote in her delicate calligraphy. She was already in the habit of writing down important matters, and afterward, when she was mute, she also recorded trivialities, never suspecting that fifty years later I would use her notebooks to reclaim the past and overcome terrors of my own. (first lines)

That’s all the quotes.

13 quotes in the collection · come back when we add more