91 Quotes by Machado de Assis

Ah! were you careful to tie me to the cliff of your frivolity, your indifference, or your agitation?

But this is what makes us lords of the earth, it is this power to restore the past, to touch the instability of our impressions and the vanity of our affections.

He wanted to explain philosophy to me; I asked him not to.

I had no children, I did not transmit to any creature the legacy of our misery.

Lascivious one, the voluptuousness of nothing awaits you.

She was not just inviting scandal, she was inviting it in partnership with ridicule.

A ridiculous old age is perhaps the saddest and ultimate surprise human nature may have in store.

Each century brought its share of shadow and light, apathy and combat, truth and error, and its courtship of systems, new ideas, new illusions.

I took her hand, pulled it lightly to me, and kissed her on the forehead, with the delicacy of a zephyr and the gravity of Abraham.