The 85 best phrases and reflections of Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno (1864 - 1936), known for being part of the famous ‘Generation of 98’ that gave way to great writers, poets and philosophers in Spain, was a recognized and respected playwright and professor of Greek, becoming rector of the University of Salamanca, with a great passion for classical works and profound reflections on life.
But perhaps what he was best known for was his constant oppositional controversies against the regime of the Spanish dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera and his dissatisfaction with the imposed Francoist movement, a cause for which he would later be sentenced and executed.
- We recommend you read: "The 75 best phrases of Antonio Machado"
Best quotes and thoughts from Miguel de Unamuno
To remember his work and life, we have brought the best quotes and reflections from the authorship of this great Spanish philosopher and writer.
1. Envy is a thousand times more terrible than hunger, because it is spiritual hunger.
Envy never leaves the hearts of unhappy people.
2. You have to feel the thought and think the feeling.
Reason and emotions should not be enemies, but allies.
3. Science teaches us, in effect, to submit our reason to the truth and to know and judge things as they are, that is, as they themselves choose to be and not as we would like them to be.
We must be able to understand that we do not have the power to change things or people according to our wishes.
4. the reason is the death of fascism.
Fascism does not understand reasons.
5. Kisses that come laughing, then they go crying, and in them life goes, which will never return.
Love can bring the greatest happiness and also the greatest misery.
6. Only those who try absurd things are capable of achieving impossible things.
Sometimes you need to think outside the box to achieve a goal.
7. Each new friend that we win in the race of life improves and enriches us even more because of what he discovers us about ourselves than because of what he gives us.
All of our friends have something to teach us about ourselves.
8. Try to heal yourself from the anguish of worrying about how you see others. Try to worry only about the idea that God may have of you.
People are always going to criticize anyone who does not conform to their rules.
9. Those who say they believe in God and still neither love nor fear Him, in fact they do not believe in Him, but rather in those who have taught them that God exists.
Not everyone has the ability to believe in God.
10. The less you read, the more damage what you read does.
We tend to want to ignore something so that it doesn't hurt us.
11. Suffering is the substance of life and the root of personality, since only suffering makes us people.
Suffering has its own way of making us grow.
12. You don't see that I've spent my life dreaming.
Dreaming can lead us to achieve incredible things.
13. You travel not to seek your destination but to flee from where you start.
Many trips are to get as far away from our past as possible.
14. If a person never contradicts himself, it must be that he does not say anything.
It is necessary to criticize ourselves in order to improve.
15. We should try to be the parents of our future rather than the descendants of our past.
Instead of judging or blaspheming past mistakes, we should move into the future.
16. Boredom is the beginning of life because games, distractions, romance and love were invented thanks to it.
Boredom can be our creative space.
17. A pedant is a stupid adulterated by the study.
A phrase that has everything true.
18. Languages, like religions, live off heresies.
People tend to condemn more strongly with their words than with their actions.
19. Happiness is something that is lived and felt, it is not a reasoned or defined thing.
Everyone has their own way of feeling happy.
20. Every act of kindness is a show of might.
An act of kindness is a demonstration of a person's strength.
21. My goal is to agitate and annoy people. I am not selling bread; I am selling yeast.
Let the noise you make be to cause a positive impact.
22. Sow the living part of yourself in the furrow of life.
Life is what we want it to be.
23. Sometimes being silent is lying, as silence can be interpreted as assent.
Silences may be necessary, but sometimes they are a sharp dagger.
24. I call ruminants to men who ruminate on human misery, worried not to fall into this or that abyss.
Those who avoid poverty also tend to reject those who come from it.
25. There are people who are so full of common sense that they do not have the smallest corner for their own sense.
There are people so moralistic that they have closed minds.
26. Those faults that we don't have, they don't bother us.
Focus on improving your weaknesses, rather than breaking down for them.
27. Ideas bring ideophobia, and the consequence is that people begin to persecute their neighbors in the name of ideas.
The most wicked acts have been done in the name of an ideal.
28. It is sad not to love someone, but it is much worse not being able to love someone.
Unrequited love is always painful, but being with someone you don't love is even more terrible.
29. Man habitually sacrifices his life for his purse, but he sacrifices his purse for his vanity.
For man, status and money will always have more power.
30. One of the advantages of not being happy is that you can wish for happiness.
We are in the constant search for happiness.
31. The way to hit the nail once is to hit the shoe a hundred times.
The best way to get it right is to have tried a thousand times.
32. The supreme triumph of reason is to cast doubt on its own validity.
It never hurts to question what we know, because we can discover something new.
33. There is no tyranny in the world more hateful than that of ideas.
Ideologies tend to disfigure the virtue of people.
34. A man dies of cold, not of darkness.
People die from external causes, not from feelings.
35. A man does not die of love or of his liver or even of old age; he dies of being a man.
Again, in this sentence, the philosopher reminds us that even if it hurts, we do not die because of what we feel.
36. It seems to me indisputable that who I am today derives from a continuous series of states of consciousness, from the one that was in my body twenty years ago.
What we are now and will be in the future is the result of everything we have lived through.
37. The writer can only interest humanity when in his works he is interested in humanity.
Writers connect with their audience when they are able to capture identifiable situations.
38. He who has faith in himself does not need others to believe in him.
Those who trust themselves are capable of ignoring the opinions of others.
39. Against affective values, reasons are not valid, because reasons are nothing more than reasons, that is, not even true.
You cannot justify your feelings with a logical reason. Because this is not everything.
40. It is not the shilling that I give you that counts, but the warmth that it carries with it from my hand.
The emotions behind the actions make them special.
41. What is vanity but the desire to survive?
Vanity can be a reflection of rebellion in the face of death and misery.
42. Which is the reason? The reason is what we all agree on. The truth is something else. The reason is social; individual truth.
Interesting reflection between concepts that seem similar, but are not.
43. Less thought, more tyrannical and absorbing thought.
When we don't take time to reflect, darkness takes over our thoughts.
44. Man is a social product and society must prevent him from being lost to it.
Society has a great impact on our personality because it is part of us.
45. When someone who dreams of us dies, a part of us dies.
When we lose someone who has believed in us, we suffer irreparable damage.
46. Unless a man aspires to the impossible, the possibility that he achieves it will not be worth it.
There are those who settle, despite not being completely happy with it.
47. Your distrust worries me and your silence offends me.
Losing trust in someone creates a great void that may never be filled again.
48. Men have a habit of yelling so they don't have to listen to each other.
There are those who fight just because their voice is heard despite not having any valid reasoning.
49. You have to look for the truth and not the reason for things. And the truth is sought with humility.
It is difficult to accept the truth because there is nothing after it.
50. Freedom is a common good and, as long as everyone does not participate in it, those who believe themselves to be such will not be free.
Can we call freedom the benefits that one group enjoys and which the rest cannot access?
51. I believe in God because I believe in God.
Each person has their own way of believing and worshiping God.
52. Christianity is apolitical.
Religion should not take part in any political party.
53. A people is convinced only of what it wants to be convinced of.
People tend to be more receptive to what they want to hear.
54. The dream remains; it is the only thing that remains; the vision remains.
Dreams never change, because they are our deepest motivation.
55. The greatest height of heroism that an individual, like a people, can reach is knowing how to face ridicule; Better yet, know how to make yourself ridiculous and not cringe at the ridiculous.
We must always find a way to face any obstacle in reality.
56. Until a person really cries it is not known if he has a soul or not.
Have you ever really cried?
57. Your neighbor's vision is as true for him as your own vision is true for you.
We all perceive the world in a different way, although we will always find some similarities between us.
58. Wait, only the one who waits lives. But fear the day when your hopes become a memory.
It's fine to have our own rhythm, but never waste time.
59. My religion is looking for the truth in life and life in the truth, although I know that I do not have to find it as long as I live; my religion fights unceasingly and tirelessly with the unknown.
Here, Miguel de Unamuno shows us how philosophy and faith can go hand in hand.
60. Nationalism is the madness of hotheads spoiled by indigestion of bad history.
His strong opinion on fascism.
61. Speech was invented for the purpose of magnifying all of our sensations and impressions, perhaps so that we could believe them.
Never hesitate to express your emotions, because it is an essential part of showing them.
62. The opinion of a whole crowd is always more credible than that of a minority.
Whether true or not, right or wrong, the majority always has power.
63. Never put in your head what fits in your pocket! Do not put in your pocket what enters your head!
Take the things you can control so they don't get out of hand.
64. Only in solitude we find ourselves; and in finding ourselves, we find in ourselves all our brothers in solitude.
Solitude should be a space for reflection and encounter with ourselves.
65. Refined pride is to refrain from acting in order not to expose ourselves to criticism.
Doing this is just a poor excuse not to act.
66. To believe in God is to yearn for His existence and, furthermore, to act as if He exists.
Having faith does not imply acting under a shadow of uncertainty.
67. It is weak because it has not hesitated enough and has wanted to reach conclusions.
Those who anticipate resolutions without knowing the whole context live in perpetual dissatisfaction.
68. Man is perishing. That may be, and if nothingness awaits us, let us act in such a way that it is an unjust fate.
If death is the end, why not take that fact as a reason to live intensely?
69. He knows everything, absolutely everything. Figure out how silly it will be.
Nobody knows everything and whoever says yes is just a great ignorant.
70. What fascist people hate above all else is smart people.
Fascists seek to benefit their own causes no matter how much it costs.
71. Hell was conceived as a police institution to inspire fear in this world. But worst of all, he no longer scares anyone, and therefore he will have to shut down.
Everyone has the ability to create their own hell on earth.
72. Life is doubt, and faith is surely only death.
We must always keep that flame of curiosity burning to avoid annoyance or blindness.
73. Art distills sensations and incorporates them with enhanced meaning.
Art always makes us feel something.
74. It is detestable that spiritual greed that those who know something, do not try to transmit that knowledge have.
The greatest display of selfishness is refusing to share knowledge, just to prevent it from benefiting the other.
75. The skeptic does not mean the one who doubts, but the one who explores or investigates, unlike the one who affirms and thinks that he has found.
It is necessary that we all have a bit of skeptic in our soul.
76. Martyrs create faith, faith does not create martyrs.
A martyr acts under his personal beliefs.
77. The truth is that reason is the enemy of life.
Even tyrants find reasons to justify their actions.
78. Science is the most intimate school of resignation and humility, because it teaches us to bow to seemingly insignificant facts.
Science gives us infinite and constant knowledge.
79. With souvenir woods we build our hopes.
Hopes are also made of what we did not have or want to repeat.
80. What use is it to you to get to define happiness if one cannot be happy with it?
Do not comment on something that you are not able to achieve.
81. It is in the religious aspect where you have to look for the most typical and the most radical of a town.
Religion influences the beliefs, values and extremisms of a society.
82. All this is happening to me and is happening to others about me, is it fact or is it fiction? Is it not possible that everything is a dream of God, or of whoever, that will disappear as soon as he wakes up?
Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction, even if we wish it were the other way around.
83. Now I begin to meditate on what I have thought, and to see its depth and soul, and that is why now I love loneliness more, but still little.
It is important not to fear loneliness but also not to feel completely comfortable in it.
84. Actions free us from bad feelings, and it is bad feelings that poison the soul.
Actions can be beneficial to the soul.
85. While men believe that they seek the truth for themselves, in fact, they seek life in the truth.
What are you looking for in this life?
