Jose Saramago Quote
He had grown so accustomed to feeling tired that he took a certain pleasure in it, the pleasure of someone who has given up, the pleasure of someone who, when the moment of truth arrives, turns back the clock and says: It's too early. The pleasure of self-sacrifice. But sacrifice is only complete when it is kept hidden from view; making it visible is tantamount to saying, Look at me, look how self-sacrificing I am, and making sure that the other people don't forget it. Therefore he had not yet given up entirely, and behind his resignation hope still lingered, just as the blue sky is always there behind the clouds.
Jose Saramago
He had grown so accustomed to feeling tired that he took a certain pleasure in it, the pleasure of someone who has given up, the pleasure of someone who, when the moment of truth arrives, turns back the clock and says: It's too early. The pleasure of self-sacrifice. But sacrifice is only complete when it is kept hidden from view; making it visible is tantamount to saying, Look at me, look how self-sacrificing I am, and making sure that the other people don't forget it. Therefore he had not yet given up entirely, and behind his resignation hope still lingered, just as the blue sky is always there behind the clouds.
Tags:
self sacrifice
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About Jose Saramago
José de Sousa Saramago (Portuguese: [ʒuˈzɛ ðɨ ˈsozɐ sɐɾɐˈmaɣu]; 16 November 1922 – 18 June 2010) was a Portuguese writer. He was the recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony [with which he] continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality." His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the theopoetic human factor. In 2003 Harold Bloom described Saramago as "the most gifted novelist alive in the world today" and in 2010 said he considers Saramago to be "a permanent part of the Western canon", while James Wood praises "the distinctive tone to his fiction because he narrates his novels as if he were someone both wise and ignorant."
More than two million copies of Saramago's books have been sold in Portugal alone and his work has been translated into 25 languages. A proponent of libertarian communism, Saramago criticized institutions such as the Catholic Church, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. An atheist, he defended love as an instrument to improve the human condition. In 1992, the Government of Portugal under Prime Minister Aníbal Cavaco Silva ordered the removal of one of his works, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, from the Aristeion Prize's shortlist, claiming the work was religiously offensive. Disheartened by this political censorship of his work, Saramago went into exile on the Spanish island of Lanzarote, where he lived alongside his Spanish wife Pilar del Río until his death in 2010.
Saramago was a founding member of the National Front for the Defense of Culture in Lisbon in 1992.
More than two million copies of Saramago's books have been sold in Portugal alone and his work has been translated into 25 languages. A proponent of libertarian communism, Saramago criticized institutions such as the Catholic Church, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. An atheist, he defended love as an instrument to improve the human condition. In 1992, the Government of Portugal under Prime Minister Aníbal Cavaco Silva ordered the removal of one of his works, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, from the Aristeion Prize's shortlist, claiming the work was religiously offensive. Disheartened by this political censorship of his work, Saramago went into exile on the Spanish island of Lanzarote, where he lived alongside his Spanish wife Pilar del Río until his death in 2010.
Saramago was a founding member of the National Front for the Defense of Culture in Lisbon in 1992.