Miguel de Unamuno quotes - page 6

But as far as our own world is concerned, its gradual leveling-down - or, we might say, its death - appears to be proved. And how will this process affect the fate of our spirit? Will it wane with the degradation of the energy of our world and return to unconsciousness, or will it grow according as the utilizable energy diminishes and by virtue of the very efforts that it makes to retard this degradation and to dominate Nature? - for this it is that constitutes the life of the spirit. May it be that consciousness and its extended support are two powers in contraposition, the one growing at the expense of the other? (Miguel de Unamuno)
Absolute relativism, which is neither more nor less than skepticism, in the most modern sense of the term, is the supreme triumph of the reasoning reason. View quote
Miguel de Unamuno
Shall we not perhaps be told, on the other hand, that if the sinner suffers an eternal punishment, it is because he does not cease to sin? - for the damned sin without ceasing. This however is no solution to the problem, which derives all its absurdity from the fact that punishment has been conceived as vindictiveness or vengeance, not as correction, and has been conceived after the fashion of barbarous peoples. And in the same way hell has been conceived as a sort of police institution, necessary in order to put fear into the world. And the worst of it is that it no longer intimidates, and therefore will have to be shut up. View quote
Miguel de Unamuno
To believe in God is to long for His existence and, further, it is to act as if he existed; it is to live by this longing and to make it the inner spring of our action. This longing or hunger for divinity begets hope, hope begets faith, and faith and hope beget charity. Of this divine longing is born our sense of beauty, of finality, of goodness. View quote
Miguel de Unamuno
Apart from the fact there is no normal standard of health, nobody has proved that man is necessarily cheerful by nature. And further, man, by the very fact of being man, of possessing consciousness, is, in comparison with the ass or the crab, a diseased animal. Consciousness is a disease. View quote
Miguel de Unamuno
Only the feeble resign themselves to final death and substitute some other desire for the longing for personal immortality. In the strong the zeal for perpetuity overrides the doubt of realizing it, and their superabundance of life overflows upon the other side of death. View quote
Miguel de Unamuno
Only in solitude do we find ourselves; and in finding ourselves, we find in ourselves all our brothers in solitude. View quote
Miguel de Unamuno
Love is the child of illusion and the parent of disillusion. View quote
Miguel de Unamuno
The skeptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches, as opposed to him who asserts and thinks that he has found. View quote
Miguel de Unamuno
Man dies of cold, not of darkness. View quote
Miguel de Unamuno
Suffering is the substance of life and the root of personality, for it is only suffering that makes us persons. (Miguel de Unamuno)
What we believe to be the motives of our conduct are usually but the pretexts for it. View quote
Miguel de Unamuno
Consciousness is a disease. View quote
Miguel de Unamuno
The only way to give finality to the world is to give it consciousness. View quote
Miguel de Unamuno
We need God, not in order to understand the why, but in order to feel and sustain the ultimate wherefore, to give a meaning to the universe. View quote
Miguel de Unamuno
Anyone who in discussion relies upon authority uses, not his understanding, but rather his memory. View quote
Miguel de Unamuno
True science teaches, above all, to doubt and to be ignorant. View quote
Miguel de Unamuno
To love with the spirit is to pity, and he who pities most loves most. View quote
Miguel de Unamuno
It is truer to say that martyrs create faith more than faith creates martyrs. View quote
Miguel de Unamuno
Human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the barrier of systems. View quote
Miguel de Unamuno
Art distills sensations and embodies it with enhanced meaning. (Miguel de Unamuno)
Cure yourself of the affliction of caring how you appear to others. Concern yourself only with how you appear before God, concern yourself only with the idea that God may have of you. View quote
Miguel de Unamuno
"The bitterest sorrow that man can know is to aspire to do much and to achieve nothing"... so Herodotus relates that a Persian said to a Theban at a banquet (book ix., chap. xvi.). And it is true. With knowledge and desire we can embrace everything, or almost everything; with the will nothing, or almost nothing. And contemplation is not happiness - no! not if this contemplation implies impotence. And out of this collision between our knowledge and our power pity arises. View quote
Miguel de Unamuno
The only way to give finality to the world is to give it consciousness. For where there is no consciousness there is no finality, finality presupposing a purpose. And... faith in God is based simply upon the vital need of giving finality to existence, of making it answer to a purpose. We need God, not in order to understand the why, but in order to feel and sustain the ultimate wherefore, to give a meaning to the Universe. View quote
Miguel de Unamuno
Like monarchy, monotheism had a martial origin. "It is only on the march and it time of war," says Robertson Smith in The Prophets of Israel, "that a nomad people feels any urgent need of a central authority, and so it came about that in the first beginnings of national organization, centering in the sanctuary of the ark, Israel was thought of mainly as a host of Jehovah. the very name of Israel is martial, and means 'God (El) fighteth,' and Jehovah in the Old Testament is Iahwé Cebāôth - the Jehovah of the armies of Israel. It was on the battlefield that Jehovah's presence was most clearly realized; but in primitive nations the leader in time of war is also the natural judge in time of peace." View quote
Miguel de Unamuno