José Maria Eça de Queiroz quotes

José Maria Eça de Queiroz was a renowned Portuguese novelist and one of the leading figures of 19th-century European realism. His acclaimed works critique social norms, hypocrisy, and the prevailing bourgeois culture of his time. He is considered one of Portugal’s greatest writers and a master of literary realism. Here are 14 of his quotes:

Even the pot-bellied abbot, who in the evening sits on his veranda with a paternal air, enjoying his coffee and picking the holes in his teeth, has in his innermost soul the makings of a Torquemada.

José Maria Eça de Queiroz

Superior forms of thought have a fatal tendency of later becoming revealed law: and all philosophy ends, in its last stages, by becoming religion.

José Maria Eça de Queiroz

In the depths of China there lives a mandarin who is richer than any king spoken of in fable or in history. You know nothing about him, not his name, his face or the silks that he wears. In order for you to inherit his limitless wealth, all you have to do is to ring the bell placed on a book by your side. In that remote corner of Mongolia, he will utter a single sigh. He will then be a corpse, and at your feet you will see gold beyond the dreams of avarice. Mortal reader, will you ring the bell?

José Maria Eça de Queiroz

Love makes man spiritual – and woman material.

José Maria Eça de Queiroz

Over the sturdy nakedness of truth the diaphanous veil of phantasy.

José Maria Eça de Queiroz

I came to the conclusion – as one invariably does in philosophy – that I was up against a primary cause and therefore an insoluble one.

José Maria Eça de Queiroz

Human effort may manage at its best to transform a starving proletariat into a well-fed bourgeoisie; but then a worse proletariat emerges from the bowels of society. Jesus was right, there will always be the poor among us. Which proves that this humanity is the greatest error that God ever committed.

José Maria Eça de Queiroz

In general, we Portuguese only begin to be idiotic when we reach the age of reason. While we are young we all have a spark of genius.

José Maria Eça de Queiroz

Perhaps one day, when socialism is the State religion, there will be niches in the temples, with a little lamp in front, and inside, images of the Fathers of the Revolution: Proudhon complete with glasses, Bacunin looking like a bear under his Russian pelts, Karl Marx leaning on his staff – symbolic of the shepherd of souls.

José Maria Eça de Queiroz

The Englishman without his tea fights only half-heartedly.

José Maria Eça de Queiroz

In the meantime England enjoys the prestige of "the great victory of Afghanistan" for a short while – certain of having to begin it once more in ten or fifteen years, because they can neither conquer and annex a vast kingdom, as large as France, nor allow the existence of a few million hostile fanatics at their side. Their policy, therefore, is to weaken them periodically with a devastating invasion: such violence is required of a great Empire.

José Maria Eça de Queiroz

The Englishman falls on the ideas and customs of other nations like a lump of granite in the water: and there he stays, a weighty encumbrance, with his Bible, his sports and his prejudices, his etiquette and selfishness – completely unaccommodating to those among whom he lives. That is why he remains, in the countries where he has lived for centuries, a foreigner.

José Maria Eça de Queiroz