Nostromo Quotes
"There was in old Giorgio an energy of feeling, a personal quality of conviction, something they called terribilita—'an old lion,' they used to say of him."
"In the end, the growing youth attained to as close an intimacy with the San Tome mine as the old man who wrote these plaintive and enraged letters on the other side of the sea."
"The spirit of self-forgetfulness, the simple devotion to a vast humanitarian idea which inspired the thought and stress of that revolutionary time, had left its mark upon Giorgio in a sort of austere contempt for all personal advantage."
"Indeed, these cloudy nights are proverbial with the seamen along the whole west coast of a great continent. Sky, land, and sea disappear together out of the world when the Placido—as the saying is—goes to sleep under its black poncho."
"The impious adventurers gave no other sign. The sailors, the Indian, and the stolen burro were never seen again."
"The head of the chairman of the railway board (from London), handsome and pale in a silvery mist of white hair and clipped beard, hovered near her shoulder attentive, smiling, and fatigued."
"On the other side, what seems to be an isolated patch of blue mist floats lightly on the glare of the horizon. This is the peninsula of Azuera, a wild chaos of sharp rocks and stony levels cut about by vertical ravines."
"The head of the calm gulf is filled on most days of the year by a great body of motionless and opaque clouds."
"The shores on the gulf are steep-to all round; three uninhabited islets basking in the sunshine just outside the cloud veil, and opposite the entrance to the harbour of Sulaco, bear the name of 'The Isabels.'"
"The few stars left below the seaward frown of the vault shine feebly as into the mouth of a black cavern."
"The power of king and church was gone, but at the sight of some heavy ruinous pile overtopping from a knoll the low mud walls of a village, Don Pepe would interrupt the tale of his campaigns to exclaim—'Poor Costaguana! Before, it was everything for the padres, nothing for the people; and now it is everything for those great politicos in Sta. Marta, for negroes and thieves.'"
"No two stones could come together anywhere without the gobernador hearing the click, señora."
"‘Behold the very paradise of snakes, señora.’"
"Whole families had been moving from the first towards the spot in the Higuerota range, whence the rumour of work and safety had spread over the pastoral campo."
"‘What would you! Poor people! Pobrecitos! Pobrecitos! But the state must have its soldiers.’"
"‘A woman’s true tenderness, like the true virility of man, is expressed in action of a conquering kind.’"
"‘As far as the knowledge of these men and their methods and their politics is concerned, I can answer for myself. I have been fed on that sort of knowledge since I was a boy. I am not likely to fall into mistakes from excess of optimism.’"
"‘Would not the muchachos of Hernandez like to get hold of this insignificant object, that looks, por Dios, very much like a piece of tin?’"
"‘If it had not been for the lawless tyranny of your government, Don Pepe, many an outlaw now with Hernandez would be living peaceably and happy by the honest work of his hands.’"
"‘It was as if God had given you the power to look into the very breasts of people.’"
"The great financier was trying to express to her his grateful sense of her hospitality and of his obligation to her husband’s 'enormous influence in this part of the country,' when she interrupted him by a low 'Hush!' The president was going to make an informal pronouncement."
"Mrs. Gould, listening to the mellow, slightly mournful voice, looking at this rotund, dark, spectacled face, at the short body, obese to the point of infirmity, thought that this man of delicate and melancholy mind, physically almost a cripple, coming out of his retirement into a dangerous strife at the call of his fellows, had the right to speak with the authority of his self-sacrifice."
"General Montero had risen with a jingle of steel scabbard and a ripple of glitter on his gold-embroidered breast; a heavy sword-hilt appeared at his side above the edge of the table. In this gorgeous uniform, with his bull neck, his hooked nose flattened on the tip upon a blue-black, dyed moustache, he looked like a disguised and sinister vaquero."
"Old Giorgio, looking up, said abruptly— 'My son would have been just such a fine young man as you, Gian’ Battista, if he had lived.'"
"The explosive noise of the railway trucks seemed to augment Decoud’s irritation. He muttered something to himself, then began to talk aloud in curt, angry phrases thrown at the silence of the two women."
"Don Jose slipped his hand under the arm of the journalist of Sulaco. 'The Porvenir must have a long and confident article upon Barrios and the irresistibleness of his army of Cayta! The moral effect should be kept up in the country.'"
"Antonia, her red lips firmly closed, averted her head behind the raised fan; and young Decoud, though he felt the girl’s eyes upon him, gazed away persistently, hooked on his elbow, with a scornful and complete detachment."
"He [Decoud] waited for a while, and then— 'I shall go to the wall,' he said, with a sort of jocular desperation."
"The value of a sentence is in the personality which utters it."
"Nothing new can be said by man or woman."
"We Occidentals have been always distinct and separated."
"In the mature Antonia, he could see with an extraordinary vividness the austere schoolgirl of the earlier days."
"Passion stood for all that, and he was ready to believe that some startlingly profound remark, some appreciation of character, or a judgment upon an event, bordered on the miraculous."
"The windows of the Casa Gould flung their shining parallelograms upon the house of the Avellanos."
"The clamour continued for some time, everybody else in the room looking towards the group."
"The political tide that once in every twenty-four hours set with a strong flood through the Gould drawing-room."
"The telegraphist came out from under the arcades with a piece of paper in his hand."
"The light of the flames touched the foliage of the first trees on the alameda."
"Silent, but not so dark as the house, because the pickets of Italian workmen guarding the railway had lighted little fires all along the line."
"A large iron nut flew in from the street as I entered, and broke one of the large mirrors set in the wall."
"I noticed also one of the club servants tied up hand and foot with the cords of the curtain and flung in a corner."
"The very windows of the club, at the corner of the calle."
"There is no room for fear on this lighter. Courage itself does not seem good enough."
"The incorruptible capataz de cargadores is the man for that work; and I, the man with a passion, but without a mission, I go with him."
"Time passes in this country as quick as anywhere else."
"The real objective is the San Tome mine itself, as you may well imagine; otherwise the Occidental Province would have been, no doubt, left alone for many weeks, to be gathered at leisure into the arms of the victorious party."
"A good name, Giorgio says, is a treasure, padrona."
"I am not running away, you understand. I am simply going away with that great treasure of silver which must be saved at all costs."
"It was as if I were taking up a curse upon me, señor doctor. A man with a treasure on this coast will have every knife raised against him in every place upon the shore."
"The only thing he seems to care for, as far as I have been able to discover, is to be well spoken of. An ambition fit for noble souls, but also a profitable one for an exceptionally intelligent scoundrel."
"I can assure you she will never be like that again. You may go to her or stay away. There is very little to be got from talking to the dying."
"To each his fate, shaped by passion or sentiment."
"There is nothing more exasperating than to hear a woman you respect rail against your good reputation."
"The water of this rivulet you hear under your feet is cool and sweet and good, señor, both before and after a smoke."
"Time is on its side, señor. And silver is an incorruptible metal that can be trusted to keep its value forever."
"Honesty alone is not enough for security."
"He must not be molested by Sotillo's soldiery."
"I think the railway has done pretty well by its friends without compromising itself hopelessly."
"Their light, sweeping along the front of the house, made the letters of the inscription, 'Albergo d’Italia Una,' leap out black from end to end of the long wall."
"All the earth made by God is holy; but the sea, which knows nothing of kings and priests and tyrants, is the holiest of all."
"Heaven itself wills it. Providence is on our side."
"Liberty, democracy, patriotism, government - all of them have a flavour of folly and murder."
"The Gould Concession was symbolic of abstract justice. Let the heavens fall."
"The necessity of living concealed somehow, for God knows how long, made everything that had gone before for years appear vain and foolish, like a flattering dream come suddenly to an end."
"Kings, ministers, aristocrats, the rich in general, kept the people in poverty and subjection; they kept them as they kept dogs, to fight and hunt for their service."
"The truth of the comparison struck Charles Gould heavily. In his determined purpose he held the mine, and the indomitable bandit held the campo by the same precarious tenure."
"An immense and weary discouragement sealed his lips for a time."
"The cruel futility of lives and of deaths thrown away in the vain endeavour to attain an enduring solution of the problem."
"He suffered too much under a conviction of irremediable folly."
"The doctor, at the last moment hesitated; then, turning away from the handle with a shrug of his uneven shoulders, slunk off hastily."
"The great mass of cloud filling the head of the gulf had long red smears amongst its convoluted folds of grey and black, as of a floating mantle stained with blood."
"To find himself without money after a run of bad luck at monte in the low, smoky room of Domingo’s posada, where the fraternity of cargadores gambled, sang, and danced of an evening; to remain with empty pockets after a burst of public generosity to some peyne d’oro girl or other (for whom he did not care), had none of the humiliation of destitution."
"It may be said that Nostromo tasted the dust and ashes of the fruit of life into which he had bitten deeply in his hunger for praise."
"He saw the quays of a big port, where the coasting feluccas, with their lateen sails outspread like motionless wings, enter gliding silently between the end of long moles of squared blocks that project angularly towards each other, hugging a cluster of shipping to the superb bosom of a hill covered with palaces."
"But, what? Return? With bare feet and head, with one check shirt and a pair of cotton calzoneros for all worldly possessions?"
"The confused and intimate impressions of universal dissolution which beset a subjective nature at any strong check to its ruling passion had a bitterness approaching that of death itself."
"The unseen powers which he had offended by refusing to bring a priest to a dying woman were lifting up their voice against him."
"The cry of the ill-omened bird, the first sound he was to hear on his return, was a fitting welcome for his betrayed individuality."
"She had been a woman of good counsel always."
"Power, punishment, pardon, are simple and credible notions."
"The necessity of overcoming small obstacles becomes wearisome to a self-confident personality as much by the certitude of success as by the monotony of effort."
"He was ready to feel the burden of sacrilegious guilt descend upon his shoulders."
"In the downfall of all the realities that made his force, he was affected by the superstition, and shuddered slightly."
"There is something in a treasure that fastens upon a man’s mind."
"He had never been taken into account. Destroyed! Her white form sitting up bowed in bed, the falling black hair, the wide-browed suffering face raised to him, the anger of her denunciations appeared to him now majestic with the awfulness"
"Our daily work must be done to the glory of the dead, and for the good of those who come after."
"There is no peace and no rest in the development of material interests."
"The time approaches when all that the Gould Concession stands for shall weigh as heavily upon the people as the barbarism, cruelty, and misrule of a few years back."
"The presence of strangers on the island would cut him completely off the treasure."
"A transgression, a crime, entering a man's existence, eats it up like a malignant growth, consumes it like a fever."
"The silence appeared like a great void, and the silence of the gulf like a tense, thin cord to which he hung suspended by both hands."
"The treasure was putting forth its latent power. It troubled the clear mind of the man who had paid the price."
"There were to be no more. An immense desolation, the dread of her own continued life, descended upon the first lady of Sulaco."
"The heroic Garibaldino sat on the same bench bowing his hoary head, his old soul dwelling alone with its memories, tender and violent, terrible and dreary—solitary on the earth full of men."
"I am going in to cook something. Aha! Son! The old man knows where to find a bottle of wine, too."
"Pray not to the God of priests and slaves, but to the God of orphans, of the oppressed, of the poor, of little children, to give thee a man like this one for a husband."
No," she said, slowly. "I never loved him. I think I never... He loves me—perhaps.
"Your hair like gold, and your eyes like violets, and your lips like the rose; your round arms, your white throat."
"A treasure. A treasure of silver to buy a gold crown for thy brow."
I cannot," he said. "Not yet. There is something that stands between us two and the freedom of the world.