El Filibusterismo quotes

… the country, representing something like a triumph over progress, a steamer that was not a steamer at all, an organism, stolid, imperfect yet unimpeachable, which, when it wished to pose as being rankly progressive, proudly contented itself with putting on a fresh coat of paint.

Indeed, the happy steamer was genuinely Filipino!

If a person were only reasonably considerate, she might even have been taken for the Ship of State, constructed, as she had been, under the inspection of Reverendos and Ilustrísimos. …

… that made the waters of the river sparkle and the breezes rustle in the bending bamboo on its banks, there she goes with her white silhouette throwing out great clouds of smoke—the Ship of State, so the joke runs, also has the vice of smoking!

The whistle shrieks at every moment, hoarse and commanding like a tyrant who would rule by shouting, so that no one on board can hear his own thoughts.

She menaces everything she meets: now she looks as though she would grind to bits the salambaw, insecure fishing apparatus which in their movements resemble skeletons of giants saluting an antediluvian tortoise;

So, at each moment, the good man had to stop, to back up, to go forward at half speed, sending—now to port, now to starboard—the five sailors equipped with long bamboo poles to give force to the turn the rudder had suggested.

He was like a veteran who, after leading men through hazardous campaigns, had in his age become the tutor of a capricious, disobedient, and lazy boy.

Doña Victorina, the only lady seated in the European group, could say whether the Tabo was not lazy, disobedient, and capricious—Doña Victorina, who, nervous as ever, was hurling invectives against the cascos, bankas, rafts of coconuts, the Indians paddling about, and even the washerwomen and …

… señora increased every time the captain shouted “Port,” “Starboard” to the sailors, who then hastily seized their poles and thrust them against the banks, thus with the strength of their legs and shoulders preventing the steamer from shoving its hull ashore at that particular point.

Seen under these circumstances the Ship of State might be said to have been converted from a tortoise into a crab every time any danger threatened.

“But, captain, why don’t your stupid steersmen go in that direction?” asked the lady with great indignation.

exclaimed the friar-artilleryman, thumping his fists down on the arms of his bamboo chair. “That’s it, that bridge and the scientists! That was just what I was going to mention, Padre Salví—puñales!”

Ben-Zayb remained silent, half smiling, either out of respect or because he really did not know what to reply, and yet his was the only thinking head in the Philippines!

Padre Irene nodded his approval as he rubbed his long nose.

The youths smiled at each other. “These men of the past,” remarked Isagani, “find obstacles for everything. Propose a thing to them and instead of seeing its advantages they only fix their attention on the difficulties.

They want everything to come smooth and round as a billiard ball.

”

Just look how they cite schedules to me now, and none other than those of the Archbishop Basilio Sancho, as if from his time up to now prices had not risen. Ha, ha, ha!

Why should a baptism cost less than a chicken?

But I play the deaf man, collect what I can, and never complain. We’re not avaricious, are we, Padre Salví?”

“

I’ve always said that those who won’t pay for expensive funerals are filibusters,

” rejoined the person addressed, with a merry laugh.

But that next year did not come, and in its stead there was another increase in the rent. Cabesang Tales became serious and scratched his head.

The clay jar was giving up all its rice to the iron pot.

When the rent had risen to two hundred pesos, Tales was not content with scratching his head and sighing; he murmured and protested.

“

We shall all be turned to clay, father, and without shirts we were born,

” was the reply.

that of a poor Indian, ignorant and friendless, confiding in the justness and righteousness of his cause, fighting against a powerful corporation before which Justice bowed her head, while the judges let fall the scales and surrendered the sword.

He fought as tenaciously as the ant which bites when it knows that it is going to be crushed, as does the fly which looks into space only through a pane of glass.

Yet the clay jar defying the iron pot and smashing itself into a thousand pieces had in it something impressive—it had the sublimeness of desperation!

“I must watch my crops,” was the answer. “

Every stalk of cane growing there is one of my wife’s bones.

”

… such discoveries usually delight the instructors, so in a college managed by men convinced that for the most part knowledge is an evil, at least for the students, the episode of Basilio produced a bad impression and he was not questioned again during the year.

Why should he be, when he made no one laugh?

Quite discouraged and thinking of abandoning his studies, he passed to the fourth year of Latin. Why study at all, why not sleep like the others and trust to luck?

One and all you forget that while a people preserves its language, it preserves the marks of its liberty, as a man preserves his independence while he holds to his own way of thinking.

Language is the thought of the peoples.

Luckily, your independence is assured; human passions are looking out for that!”

The jeweler smiled. “

What are physical sufferings compared to moral tortures? What is the death of a man in the presence of the death of a society?

Some day you will perhaps be a great physician, if they let you go your way in peace, but greater yet will be he who can inject a new idea into this anemic people!

You, what are you doing for the land that gave you existence, that supports your life, that affords you knowledge?

Don’t you realize that that is a useless life which is not consecrated to a great idea? It is a stone wasted in the fields without becoming a part of any edifice.

”

… because then it is rapine under a beautiful name, but however perfect humanity may become, patriotism will always be a virtue among oppressed peoples, because it will at all times mean love of justice, of liberty, of personal dignity—nothing of chimerical dreams, of effeminate idyls!

The greatness of a man is not in living before his time, a thing almost impossible, but in understanding its desires, in responding to its needs, and in guiding it on its forward way.

The geniuses that are commonly believed to have existed before their time, only appear so because those who judge them see from a great distance, or take as representative of the age the line of stragglers!”

“Prevent others from suffering what you have suffered, that in the future there be no brothers murdered or mothers driven to madness.

Resignation is not always a virtue; it is a crime when it encourages tyrants: there are no despots where there are no slaves!

Man is in his own nature so wicked that he always abuses complaisance. I thought as you do, and you know what my fate was.

The old man blessed her silently, while she tried to appear merry. “When father comes back, tell him that I have at last gone to college—my mistress talks Spanish.

It’s the cheapest college I could find.

”

Nearly all led by the hand or carried in their arms a little boy or girl decked out as if for a fiesta.

Christmas day in the Philippines is, according to the elders, a fiesta for the children, who are perhaps not of the same opinion and who, it may be supposed, have for it an instinctive dread.

They are roused early, washed, dressed, and decked out with everything new, dear, and precious that they possess—high silk shoes, big hats, woolen or velvet suits, without overlooking four or five scapularies, which contain texts from St.

The only positive results they are accustomed to get from the fiesta are the marks of the aforesaid pinchings, the vexations, and at best an attack of indigestion from gorging themselves with candy and cake in the houses of kind relatives.

But such is the custom, and Filipino children enter the world through these ordeals, which afterwards prove the least sad, the least hard, of their lives.

Adult persons who live independently also share in this fiesta, by visiting their parents and their parents’ relatives, crooking their knees, and wishing them a merry Christmas. Their Christmas gift consists of a sweetmeat, some fruit, a glass of water, or some insignificant present.

“That’s it, yes, sir, diamonds, old diamonds, antique stones, you know,” she responded. “Papa will pay for them, because he likes antique things, antique stones.”

Sinang was accustomed to joke about the great deal of Latin her father understood and the little her husband knew.

“It just happens that I have some antique jewels,” replied Simoun, taking the canvas cover from the smaller chest, a polished steel case with bronze trimmings and stout locks. “I have necklaces of Cleopatra’s, real and genuine, discovered in the Pyramids;

He slapped the chest and went on in a loud tone in bad Tagalog: “

Here I have, as in a medicine-chest, life and death, poison and balm, and with this handful I can drive to tears all the inhabitants of the Philippines!

”

Neither pity nor humanity has been shown you—you have been persecuted beyond the tomb, as was Mariano Herbosa! Weep or laugh, there in those lonely isles where you wander vaguely, uncertain of the future!

Spain, the generous Spain, is watching over you, and sooner or later you will have justice!

“It’s more immoral that vice has good buildings and learning none. Let’s be practical, gentlemen, and not be carried away by sentiment.

In politics there’s nothing worse than sentiment.

While from humane considerations we forbid the cultivation of opium in our colonies, we tolerate the smoking of it, and the result is that we do not combat the vice but impoverish ourselves.”

“

It’s a peaceful rebellion, a revolution on stamped paper,

” added Padre Sibyla.

There’s nothing like being just; that I’ve always said to my brethren, but they won’t believe me.

The Indian idolizes justice, like every race in its youth; he asks for punishment when he has done wrong, just as he is exasperated when he has not deserved it.

Is theirs a just desire? Then grant it! Let’s give them all the schools they want, until they are tired of them. Youth is lazy, and what urges them to activity is our opposition.

“

Because I can’t conceive, Padre, how one can be absent from the class and at the same time recite the lesson in it. Your Reverence is saying that to be is not to be.

”

Each youth had lost another hour of his life and with it a portion of his dignity and self-respect, and in exchange there was an increase of discontent, of aversion to study, of resentment in their hearts.

After all this ask for knowledge, dignity, gratitude!

De nobis, post haec, tristis sententia fertur!

“The Holy Mother Church has learned doctors—what do I know? Perhaps it is feared that we may come to understand the laws so that we can obey them.

What will become of the Philippines on the day when we understand one another?

”

“The Holy Mother Church has learned doctors—what do I know?

Perhaps it is feared that we may come to understand the laws so that we can obey them.

What will become of the Philippines on the day when we understand one another?”

Sandoval did not relish the dialectic and jesting turn of the conversation; along that path could rise no speech worth the while. “Don’t make a joke of things!” he exclaimed. “This is a serious matter.”

“The Lord deliver me from joking when there are friars concerned!”

“But, on what do you base—”

… that School of Arts and Trades, of which I have been the most enthusiastic supporter and the realization of which I shall greet as the first streak of dawn for these fortunate islands, of that School of Arts and Trades the friars have taken charge—”

“Or the cat of the canary, which amounts to the same thing,”

added Pecson, in his turn interrupting the speech.

… that it is a tyrannical and despotic government which, in order to make a display of force and independence, denies everything through fear or distrust, and that the tyrannized and enslaved peoples are the only ones whose duty it is never to ask for anything.

A people that hates its government ought to ask for nothing but that it abdicate its power.

”

“Poor boy!” he murmured, “similar thoughts also crossed my mind once! What more could anyone desire than to be able to say: ‘I have done this for the good of the fatherland, I have consecrated my life to the welfare of others!’

A crown of laurel, steeped in aloes, dry leaves that cover thorns and worms!

That is not life, that does not get us our daily bread, nor does it bring us honors—the laurel would hardly serve for a salad, nor produce ease, nor aid us in winning lawsuits, but quite the reverse!

That is not life, that does not get us our daily bread, nor does it bring us honors—the laurel would hardly serve for a salad, nor produce ease, nor aid us in winning lawsuits, but quite the reverse!

Every country has its code of ethics, as it has its climate and its diseases, different from the climate and the diseases of other countries.

”

To all the remedies suggested Simoun responded with a sarcastic and unfeeling exclamation about nonsense, until one of them in exasperation asked him for his opinion.

“My opinion?” he retorted. “Study how other nations prosper, and then do as they do.”

“And why do they prosper, Señor Simoun?”

Some prudent persons added with winks and half-uttered words that his Black Eminence was advising the General to avail himself of the Chinese in order to humble the tenacious pride of the natives.

“To hold the people in subjection,” he was reported to have said, “there’s nothing like humiliating them and humbling them in their own eyes.”

To this end an opportunity had soon presented itself. The guilds of mestizos and natives were continually watching one another, venting their bellicose spirits and their activities in jealousy and distrust.

To give a show of probability to this, he concluded: “Because, remember, if I should expose the trick of the mirrors to the public, it would ruin the poor American’s business.”

Ben-Zayb was a conscientious individual.

About a dozen set out, among them our acquaintances, Padres Salví, Camorra, and Irene, Don Custodio, Ben-Zayb, and Juanito Pelaez. Their carriages set them down at the entrance to the Quiapo Plaza.

“No, I can’t turn back,” he exclaimed, wiping the perspiration from his forehead. “The work is at hand and its success will justify me! If I had conducted myself as you did, I should have succumbed.

Nothing of idealism, nothing of fallacious theories! Fire and steel to the cancer, chastisement to vice, and afterwards destroy the instrument, if it be bad!

No, I have planned well, but now I feel feverish, my reason wavers, it is natural—If I have done ill, it has been that I may do good, and the end justifies the means. What I will do is not to expose myself—”

Some were born to command and others to serve—plainly, that is a truism which can’t be uttered very loudly, but it can be put into practise without many words. For look, the trick depends upon trifles.

When you wish to reduce a people to subjection, assure it that it is in subjection. The first day it will laugh, the second protest, the third doubt, and the fourth be convinced.

To keep the Filipino docile, he must have repeated to him day after day what he is, to convince him that he is incompetent. What good would it do, besides, to have him believe in something else that would make him wretched?

… relating this or that lurid or droll story wherein the habits danced, or rather friars without habits, yet in speaking of the Philippines, which should be ruled by special laws, he would cough, look wise, and again extend his hand downwards to that mysterious altitude.

“The friars are necessary, they’re a necessary evil,” he would declare.

But how he would rage when any Indian dared to doubt the miracles or did not acknowledge the Pope! All the tortures of the Inquisition were insufficient to punish such temerity.

How many original ideas, how many sublime thoughts, how many means of ameliorating the woes of the Philippines! Immortality and the gratitude of the country were surely his!

Like an old lover who discovers a moldy package of amorous epistles, Don Custodio arose and approached the desk.

The first envelope, thick, swollen, and plethoric, bore the title: projects in project.

Then came the projects nearing completion, projects presented, projects rejected, projects approved, projects postponed.

These last envelopes held little, but the least of all was that of the projects executed.

Don Custodio wrinkled up his nose—what did it contain? He had completely forgotten what was in it. A sheet of yellowish paper showed from under the flap, as though the envelope were sticking out its tongue. This he drew out and unfolded:

Don Custodio wrinkled up his nose—what did it contain? He had completely forgotten what was in it.

A sheet of yellowish paper showed from under the flap, as though the envelope were sticking out its tongue.

This he drew out and unfolded: it was the famous project for the School of Arts and Trades!

But feeling his own to be empty, he again shrugged his shoulders.

What did it matter to him, even though the heavens should fall?

So he continued his pacing about. On passing near two persons engaged in conversation, he caught what one of them, who had rosaries and scapularies around his neck, was saying in Tagalog: “The friars are more powerful than the General, don’t be a fool!

“What if they should invite us to go in?” asked the novice timidly.

“Get out, boy! I never accept favors!” retorted Tadeo majestically. “I confer them, but disinterestedly.”

The novice bit his lip and felt smaller than ever, while he placed a respectful distance between himself and his fellow townsman.

“But his daughters are very white.”

“Yes, that’s the reason rice has gone up in price, and yet they eat nothing but bread.”

The novice did not understand the connection between the price of rice and the whiteness of those girls, but he held his peace.

For this reason, Don Custodio, in spite of the active opposition he had manifested toward the French operetta, had gone to the theater, which action won him some caustic remarks on the part of Don Manuel, his ancient adversary in the sessions of the Ayuntamiento.

“I’ve come to judge the operetta,” he had replied in the tone of a Cato whose conscience was clear.

So Makaraig was exchanging looks of intelligence with Pepay, who was giving him to understand that she had something to tell him. As the dancing girl’s face wore a happy expression, the students augured that a favorable outcome was assured.

She had the air of a queen and gazed disdainfully at the whole house, as if to say, “I’ve come later than all of you, you crowd of upstarts and provincials, I’ve come later than you!”

There are persons who go to the theater like the contestants in a mule-race: the last one in, wins, and we know very sensible men who would ascend the scaffold rather than enter a theater before the first act.

But the lady’s triumph was of short duration—she caught sight of the other box that was still empty, and began to scold her better half, thus starting such a disturbance that many were annoyed.

“Serpolette hasn’t any voice, nor Germaine grace, nor is that music, nor is it art, nor is it anything!” he concluded with marked contempt.

To set oneself up as a great critic there is nothing like appearing to be discontented with everything.

Besides, the management had sent only two seats for the newspaper staff.

“The funniest part of it,” Makaraig added, “is that Padre Irene has advised us to celebrate the event with a banquet or a torchlight procession—a public demonstration of the students en masse to render thanks to all the persons who have intervened in the affair.”

“Yes, after the blow, let’s sing and give thanks. Super flumina Babylonis sedimus!”

“Yes, a banquet like that of the convicts,” said Tadeo.

His vicious appetite satisfied, Capitan Tiago would fall into a good humor, become tender, and call him his son, tearfully recalling the youth’s services, how well he administered the estates, and would even talk of making him his heir.

Basilio would smile bitterly and reflect that in this world complaisance with vice is rewarded better than fulfilment of duty.

Not a few times did he feel tempted to give free rein to the craving and conduct his benefactor to the grave by a path of flowers and smiling illusions rather than lengthen his life along a road of sacrifice.

Basilio had no time to open them, and he was perhaps restrained also by the thought that there is nothing pleasant about receiving an insult or a provocation without having any means of replying or defending oneself.

The censorship, in fact, permitted insults to the Filipinos but prohibited replies on their part.

In the midst of the silence that reigned in the house, broken only by a feeble snore that issued now and then from the adjoining bedroom, Basilio heard light footfalls on the stairs, footfalls that soon crossed the hallway and approached the room where he …

Cabesang Tales is below, he has come with me here! Again I ask you—will you come with us or do you prefer to expose yourself to the resentment of my followers?

In critical moments, to declare oneself neutral is to be exposed to the wrath of both the contending parties.

”

They had engaged all the tables for themselves, ordered the lights to be increased, and had posted on the wall beside the landscapes and Chinese kakemonos this strange versicle:

“Glory to Custodio for his Cleverness and Pansit on Earth to the Youths of Good Will.”

In a country where everything grotesque is covered with a mantle of seriousness, where many rise by the force of wind and hot air, in a country where the deeply serious and sincere may do damage on issuing from the heart and may cause trouble, …

exclaimed the young man impetuously. “You have not dared to go into the subject deeply, you have not wished to gaze into the depths from fear of finding yourself there in the darkness of your brethren. What we are, you have made us.

A people tyrannized over is forced to be hypocritical; a people denied the truth must resort to lies; and he who makes himself a tyrant breeds slaves.

There is no morality, you say, so let it be—even though statistics can refute you in that here are not committed crimes like those among other peoples, blinded by the fumes of their moralizers.

Who is to blame for that? You who for three centuries and a half have had in your hands our education, or we who submit to everything?

If after three centuries and a half the artist has been able to produce only a caricature, stupid indeed he must be!

”

Not only is he stupid and a thief, he is a villain in that he prevents any other workman from trying his skill to see if he might not produce something worth while!

The deadly jealousy of the incompetent!

”

“You impute all the faults to us, because you see only us, who are near,” he said in a less haughty tone. “It’s natural and doesn’t surprise me.

A person hates the soldier or policeman who arrests him and not the judge who sends him to prison.

You and we are both dancing to the same measure of music—if at the same note you lift your foot in unison with us, don’t blame us for it, it’s the music that is directing our movements.

‘corruptissima in republica plurimae leges,’ said Tacitus. To prevent one case of fraud, there are provided a million and a half preventive or humiliating regulations, which produce the immediate effect of awakening in the public the desire to elude and mock such regulations.

To make a people criminal, there’s nothing more needed than to doubt its virtue.

Enact a law, not only here, but even in Spain, and you will see how the means of evading it will be sought, and this is for the very reason that the legislators have overlooked the fact that the more an object is hidden, the …

Yes, Padre, there is something that impels them, and that something is the government itself. It is you yourselves who pitilessly ridicule the uncultured Indian and deny him his rights, on the ground that he is ignorant.

You strip him and then scoff at his nakedness.

”

In Dulumbayan various shots also resounded, from which there resulted the death of a poor old deaf man, who had not heard the sentinel’s quién vive, and of a hog that had heard it and had not answered España!

The old man was buried with difficulty, since there was no money to pay for the obsequies, but the hog was eaten.

In Manila, in a confectionery near the University much frequented by the students, the arrests were thus commented upon.

Ah, my dear sir, we protest when we read that might is placed before right, yet we applaud when in practise we see might play the hypocrite in not only perverting right but even in using it as a tool in order to gain control.

For the very reason that I love Spain, I’m speaking now, and I defy your frown!

“I don’t wish that the coming ages accuse Spain of being the stepmother of the nations, the vampire of races, the tyrant of small islands, since it would be a horrible mockery of the noble principles of our ancient kings.

No, to be great Spain does not have to be a tyrant, Spain is sufficient unto herself, Spain was greater when she had only her own territory, wrested from the clutches of the Moor.

I too am a Spaniard, but before being a Spaniard I am a man, and before Spain and above Spain is her honor, the lofty principles of morality, the eternal principles of immutable justice!

Ah, you are surprised that I think thus, because you have no idea of the grandeur of the Spanish name, no, you haven’t any idea of it, you identify it with persons and interests.

“Yes, nitroglycerin!” repeated Simoun slowly, with his cold smile and a look of delight at the glass flask. “It’s also something more than nitroglycerin—it’s concentrated tears, repressed hatred, wrongs, injustice, outrage.

It’s the last resort of the weak, force against force, violence against violence.

A moment ago I was hesitating, but you have come and decided me.

Europe will applaud as the end of a drama, the close of a tragedy, is applauded, for the vulgar do not fix their attention on principles, they look only at results.

Commit the crime well, and you will be admired and have more partisans than if you had carried out virtuous actions with modesty and timidity.

”

“Exactly,” rejoined the youth, “what does it matter to me, after all, whether they praise or censure, when this world takes no care of the oppressed, of the poor, and of weak womankind?

What obligations have I to recognize toward society when it has recognized none toward me?

”

No, good taste before everything else. The bows, moreover, were not now so profound as before, he noticed insistent stares and even looks of dislike, but still he replied affably and even attempted to smile.

“It’s plain that the sun is setting,” observed Padre Irene in Ben-Zayb’s ear. “Many now stare him in the face.”

The devil with the curate—that was just what he was going to remark!

The profound silence of amazement followed these words. Simoun, the evil genius of the Captain-General, the rich trader to whose house they had gone to buy unset gems, Simoun, who had received the Orenda girls with great courtesy and had paid them fine compliments!

For the very reason that the story seemed absurd it was believed.

“Credo quia absurdum,” said St. Augustine.

Padre Florentine ceased playing and approached the window to gaze out at the sea, whose desolate surface was without a ship, without a sail—it gave him no suggestion. A solitary islet outlined in the distance spoke only of solitude and made the space more lonely.

Infinity is at times despairingly mute.

The old man was trying to analyze the sad and ironical smile with which Simoun had received the news that he was to be arrested. What did that smile mean?

“The glory of saving a country is not for him who has contributed to its ruin. You have believed that what crime and iniquity have defiled and deformed, another crime and another iniquity can purify and redeem. Wrong!

Hate never produces anything but monsters and crime criminals! Love alone realizes wonderful works, virtue alone can save!

No, if our country has ever to be free, it will not be through vice and crime, it will not be so by corrupting its sons, deceiving some and bribing others, no! Redemption presupposes virtue, virtue sacrifice, and sacrifice love!”

Love alone realizes wonderful works, virtue alone can save! No, if our country has ever to be free, it will not be through vice and crime, it will not be so by corrupting its sons, deceiving some and bribing others, no!

Redemption presupposes virtue, virtue sacrifice, and sacrifice love!

”

“Because you chose means that He could not sanction,” was the severe reply. “

The glory of saving a country is not for him who has contributed to its ruin.

You have believed that what crime and iniquity have defiled and deformed, another crime and another iniquity can purify and redeem. Wrong! Hate never produces anything but monsters and crime criminals! Love alone realizes wonderful works, virtue alone can save!

“

The just and the worthy must suffer in order that their ideas may be known and extended!

You must shake or shatter the vase to spread its perfume, you must smite the rock to get the spark! There is something providential in the persecutions of tyrants, Señor Simoun!”

“The just and the worthy must suffer in order that their ideas may be known and extended!

You must shake or shatter the vase to spread its perfume, you must smite the rock to get the spark!

There is something providential in the persecutions of tyrants, Señor Simoun!”

An immoral government presupposes a demoralized people, a conscienceless administration, greedy and servile citizens in the settled parts, outlaws and brigands in the mountains.

Like master, like slave! Like government, like country!

”