Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis quotes

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis was a Brazilian novelist, poet, and short story writer, widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in Latin American literature. His innovative narrative style and psychological insight deeply influenced Brazilian literature. He is celebrated for masterpieces such as "Dom Casmurro" and "The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas." Here are 17 of his quotes:

For some time I debated over whether I should start these memoirs at the beginning or at the end, that is, whether I should put my birth or my death in first place. Since common usage would call for beginning with birth, two considerations led me to adopt a different method: the first is that I am not exactly a writer who is dead but a dead man who is a writer, for whom the grave was a second cradle; the second is that the writing would be more distinctive and novel in that way. Moses, who also wrote about his death, didn't place it at the opening but at the close: a radical difference between this book and the Pentateuch.

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

We kill time; time buries us.

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

To him the stars seemed like so many musical notes affixed to the sky, just waiting for somebody to unfasten them. Someday the sky would be emptied, but by then the earth would be a constellation of musical scores.

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

The greatest sin, after the initial sin, is its publication.

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

The best definition of love in the world is not worth one kiss from the girl you love.

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

How many wicked intentions climb aboard a pure and innocent phrase, after it is already on its way! It is enough to make one suspect that lying is, many a time, as involuntary as breathing.

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

Besides, I like epitaphs. Among civilized people they're an expression of that pious and secret selfishness that induces us to pull out of death a shred at least of the shade that has passed on.

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

There is truly only one misfortune: that of not being born.

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

Life...is an enormous lottery: the prizes are few, the failures innumerable. Out of the sighs of one generation are kneaded the hopes of the next. That's life.

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

Imagination has been the companion of my whole existence – lively, swift, restless, at times timid and balky, most often ready to devour plain upon plain in its course.

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

Destiny is not only a dramatist, it is also its own stage manager. That is, it sets the entrances of the characters on scene, gives them letters and other objects, and produces the off-stage noises to go with the dialogue: thunder, a carriage, a shot.

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

Everything comes to an end, reader. It is an old truism to which may be added that not everything that lasts, lasts for long. This latter part is not readily admitted; on the contrary the idea that an air castle lasts longer than the very air of which it is made is hard to get out of a person's head, and this is fortunate, otherwise the custom of making those almost eternal constructions might be lost.

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

Life is so beautiful that even the idea of death must be born before it can be realized.

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

Man is...a thinking erratum, that's what he is. Every season of life is an edition that corrects the one before and which will also be corrected itself until the definitive edition, which the publisher gives to the worms gratis.

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

To him the stars seemed like so many musical notes affixed to the sky, just waiting for somebody to unfasten them.

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis