F. Sionil Jose Quotes

The only infallible truth of our lives is that everything we love in life will be taken from us.

A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it.

The years like great black oxen tread the world, and God, the herdsman goads them on behind, and I am broken by their passing feet.

song of elli (old age) "What is plucked will grow again, What is slain lives on, What is stolen will remain What is gone is gone... What is sea-born dies on land, Soft is trod upon. What is given burns the hand - What is gone is gone... Here is there, and high is low; All may be undone. What is true, no two men know - What is gone is gone... Who has choices need not choose. We must, who have none. We can love but what we lose - What is gone is gone.

We are swimming on the face of time and all else has drowned, is drowning, or will drown.

We mourn the transitory things and fret under the yoke of the immutable ones.

The world is so ordered that we must, in a material sense, lose everything we have and love, one thing after another, until we ourselves close our eyes.

God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice.

We were aware of the fact that death walks hand in hand with struggle.

I've been through so much in my life. I've seen so much. I know how fast things can change. I know someone can be here one minute and gone the next.

I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.

Life is not orderly. No matter how we try to make life so, right in the middle of it we die, lose a leg, fall in love, drop a jar of applesauce.

As the blessings of health and fortune have a beginning, so they must also find an end. Everything rises but to fall, and increases but to decay.

No blessing lasts forever.

To have died once is enough.

There is some suffering that awaits us all.

You get older. In the end, you end up accepting everything in your life - suffering, horror, love, loss, hate - all of it.

Relationships are temporary, and everyone needs to understand that.

Things pass us by. Nobody can catch them. That's the way we live our lives.

The lot of man is to suffer and die.What's gone is of no consequence.

We the mortals touch the metals, the wind, the ocean shores, the stones, knowing they will go on, inert or burning, and I was discovering, naming all the these things: it was my destiny to love and say goodbye.

Passing away" is written on the world and all the world contains.

Have not all past human beings parted, And must not all the present, one day part?

But everyone disappears, no matter who loves them.