Quotes by Jose Marti

• It is a sin not to do what one is capable of doing.
• Talent is a gift that brings with it an obligation to serve the world, and not ourselves, for it is not of our making.
• If I survive, I will spend my whole life at the oven door seeing that no one is denied bread and, so as to give a lesson of charity, especially those who did not bring flour.
• Man loves liberty, even if he does not know that he loves it. He is driven by it and flees from where it does not exist.
• Men are like the stars; some generate their own light while others reflect the brilliance they receive.
• Men of action, above all those whose actions are guided by love, live forever.
• Mountains culminate in peaks, and nations in men.
• One is guilty of all abjection that one does not help to relieve.
• One just principle from the depths of a cave is more powerful than an army.
• Only those who spread treachery, fire, and death out of hatred for the prosperity of others are undeserving of pity.
• Other famous men, those of much talk and few deeds, soon evaporate. Action is the dignity of greatness.
• Others go to bed with their mistresses; I with my ideas.
• Love is the bond between men, the way to teach and the center of the world.
• Perhaps the enemies of liberty are such only because they judge it by its loud voice.
• Like stones rolling down hills, fair ideas reach their objectives despite all obstacles and barriers. It may be possible to speed or hinder them, but impossible to stop them.
• The force of passion is balanced by the force of interest.
• The struggles waged by nations are weak only when they lack support in the hearts of their women.
• The vote is a trust more delicate than any other, for it involves not just the interests of the voter, but his life, honor and future as well.
• The wretch who lives without freedom feels like dressing in the mud from the streets Those who have you, o Liberty, do not know. you. Those who do not have you should not speak of you, but win you.
• There is happiness in duty, although it may not seem so.
• To busy oneself with what is futile when one can do something useful, to attend to what is simple when one has the mettle to attempt what is difficult, is to strip talent of its dignity.
• To give one's life is a right only when one gives it unselfishly.
• To use for our exclusive benefit what is not ours is theft.
• We are free, but not to be evil, not to be indifferent to human suffering, not to profit from the people, from the work created and sustained through their spirit of political association, while refusing to contribute to the political state that we profit from.
• We light the oven so that everyone may bake bread in it.
• He who does not see things in their depth should not call himself a radical.
• A child, from the time he can think, should think about all he sees, should suffer for all who cannot live with honesty, should work so that all men can be honest, and should be honest himself.
• A genuine man goes to the roots. To be a radical is no more than that: to go to the roots.
• A grain of poetry suffices to season a century.
• A selfish man is a thief.
• An insatiable appetite for glory leads to sacrifice and death, but innate instinct leads to self-preservation and life.
• But love, like the sun that it is, sets afire and melts everything. what greed and privilege to build up over whole centuries the indignation of a pious spirit, with its natural following of oppressed souls, will cast down with a single shove.
• But when women are moved and lend help, when women, who are by nature calm and controlled, give encouragement and applause, when virtuous and knowledgeable women grace the endeavor with their sweet love, then it is invincible.
• Culture, which makes talent shine, is not completely ours either, nor can we place it solely at our disposal. Rather, it belongs mainly to our country, which gave it to us, and to humanity, from which we receive it as a birthright.
• Fortunately, there is a sane equilibrium in the character of nations, as there is in that of men.
• Freedoms, like privileges, prevail or are imperiled together You cannot harm or strive to achieve one without harming or furthering all.
• Man is a living duty, a depository of powers that he must not leave in a brute state. Man is a wing.
• He who could have been a torch and stoops to being a pair of jaws is a deserter.
• A child who does not think about what happens around him and is content with living without wondering whether he lives honestly is like a man who lives from a scoundrel's work and is on the road to being a scoundrel.
• He who receives money in trust to administer for the benefit of its owner, and uses it either for his own interest or against the wishes of its rightful owner, is a thief.
• He who uses the office he owes to the voters wrongfully and against them is a thief.
• In truth, men speak too much of danger.
• Charm is a product of the unexpected.
• It is necessary to make virtue fashionable.
• It is terrible to speak of you, Liberty, for one who lives without you.
• It is the duty of man to raise up man.
• Just as he who gives his life to serve a great idea is admirable, he who avails himself of a great idea to serve his personal hopes of glory and power is abominable, even if he too risks his life.
• Liberty is the right of every man to be honest, to think and to speak without hypocrisy.
• Happiness exists on earth, and it is won through prudent exercise of reason, knowledge of the harmony of the universe, and constant practice of generosity.
• Every human being has within him an ideal man, just as every piece of marble contains in a rough state a statue as beautiful as the one that Praxiteles the Greek made of the god Apollo.