10 citations and a verse for Yoani

The verse, from my admired Abilio Estevez:

– Heaven is in hell and both are on the Island.

Everything seems to indicate that Yoani cannot collect her prize tonight.  I am not going to say that I expected it or that it surprises me, I don’t want to pass myself off as a guru or as naïve.  I have no time for gloating.  I only want to point out that life will give you your revenge and, I quote Ernesto Hernández Busto, that night that one day will dismiss the Night, I am sure will be much better.

10 citations from Ortega y Gasset in tribute to Yoani, our Voice:

1 – To be bewildered, to be surprised, is to begin to understand.

2 – The beauty that attracts rarely coincides with the beauty that you will love.

3 – A man is bettered by his capacity for dissatisfaction.

4 – Youth needs to believe itself, a priori, to be superior.  Of course it is wrong but this is precisely the great right of youth.

5 – Knowing what you don’t know is perhaps the most difficult and subtle knowledge.

6 – I can commit myself to being sincere, but do not expect of me that I commit to being impartial.

7 – It is not easy to deal with the stubborn. There is no argument that convinces.  Rule for dealing with them: “No oak collapses at the first blow of the ax; a drip cracks the hardest rock.

8 – Not what we did yesterday, but what we are going to do together tomorrow, joins us together in state.

9 – To live is to constantly decide what we are going to be.

10 – I am myself and my circumstance, and if I do not save it I cannot save myself.


Diccionario de Citas [Dictionary of Quotations], Luis Señor, Espasa Calpe, S.A. © 1997.