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The Distribution Of Tasks Among The Various Employees Follows A Simple Rule, Which Is That The Duty Of The Members Of Each Category Is To Do As Much Work As They Possibly Can, So That Only A Small Part Of That Work Need Be Passed To The Category Above. This Means That The Clerks Are Obliged To Work Without Cease From Morning To Night, Whereas The Senior Clerks Do So Only Now And Then, The Deputies Very Rarely, And The Registrar Almost Never.

-Jose Saramago

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The Distribution Of Tasks

Jose Saramago

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The Distribution Of Tasks Among The Various Employees Follows A Simple Rule, Which Is That The Duty Of The Members Of Each Category Is To Do As Much Work As They Possibly Can, So That Only A Small Part Of That Work Need Be Passed To The Category Above. This Means That The Clerks Are Obliged To Work Without Cease From Morning To Night, Whereas The Senior Clerks Do So Only Now And Then, The Deputies Very Rarely, And The Registrar Almost Never.

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The Distribution Of Tasks Among The Various Employees Follows A Simple Rule, Which Is That The Duty Of The Members Of Each Category Is To Do As Much Work As They Possibly Can, So That Only A Small Part Of That Work Need Be Passed To The Category Above. This Means That The Clerks Are Obliged To Work Without Cease From Morning To Night, Whereas The Senior Clerks Do So Only Now And Then, The Deputies Very Rarely, And The Registrar Almost Never.

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Blindness Is A Private Matter Between A Person And The Eyes With Which He Or She Was Born.

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Mysterious Things

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Today's Bread Does Not Eliminate Yesterday's Hunger, Much Less That Of Tomorrow.

What Kind Of World Is This That Can Send Machines To Mars And Does Nothing To Stop The Killing Of A Human Being?

In Effect I Am Not A Novelist, But Rather A Failed Essayist Who Started To Write Novels Because He Didn't Know How To Write Essays.

The World Had Already Changed Before September 11. The World Has Been Going Through A Process Of Change Over The Last 20 Or 30 Years. A Civilization Ends, Another One Begins.

The History Of Mankind Is The History Of Our Misunderstandings With God, For He Doesn't Understand Us, And We Don't Understand Him.

Misunderstanding

Anyone Who Gets Up Early By Inclination Or Has Been Forced To Rise Early Out Of Necessity Finds It Intolerable That Others Should Go On Sleeping Soundly

Earthenware Is Like People, It Needs To Be Well Treated.

As Citizens, We All Have An Obligation To Intervene And Become Involved - It's The Citizen Who Changes Things.

Reading Is Probably Another Way Of Being In A Place.

Being Fired Was The Best Luck Of My Life. It Made Me Stop And Reflect. It Was The Birth Of My Life As A Writer.

Perhaps Only In A World Of The Blind Will Things Be What They Truly Are.

But Truths Need To Be Repeated Many Times So That They Don't, Poor Things, Lapse Into Oblivion.

The Only Miracle We Can Perform Is To Go On Living, Said The Woman, To Preserve The Fragility Of Life From Day To Day, As If It Were Blind And Did Not Know Where To Go, And Perhaps It Is Like That, Perhaps It Really Does Not Know, It Placed Itself In Our Hands, After Giving Us Intelligence.

Just As The Habit Does Not Make The Monk, The Sceptre Does Not Make The King.

In Matters Of Feeling And Of The Heart, Too Much Is Always Better Than Too Little.

Blessed Be The Night, Which Conceals And Protects Things Fair And Foul With The Same Indifferent Mantle.

Just Like Everything Else In Life, Let Time Take Its Course And It Will Find A Solution.

The Beginning Is Never The Clear, Precise End Of A Thread, The Beginning Is A Long, Painfully Slow Process That Requires Time And Patience In Order To Find Out In Which Direction It Is Heading, A Process That Feels Its Way Along The Path Ahead Like A Blind Man The Beginning Is Just The Beginning, What Came Before Is Nigh On Worthless.

The Time For Miracles Has Either Passed Or Not Come Yet, Besides, Miracles, Genuine Miracles, Whatever People Say, Are Not Such A Good Idea, If It Means Destroying The Very Order Of Things In Order To Improve Them.

Blind People Do Not Need A Name, I Am My Voice, Nothing Else Matters.

Society Has To Change, But The Political Powers We Have At The Moment Are Not Enough To Effect This Change. The Whole Democratic System Would Have To Be Rethought.

Human Nature Is, By Definition, A Talkative One, Imprudent, Indiscreet, Gossipy, Incapable Of Closing Its Mouth And Keeping It Closed.

We Use Words To Understand Each Other And Even, Sometimes, To Find Each Other.

The U.s. Needs To Control The Middle East, The Gateway To Asia. It Already Has Military Installations In Uzbekistan.

As My Cat Would Say, All Hours Are Good For Sleeping.

Liking Is Probably The Best Form Of Ownership, And Ownership The Worst Form Of Liking.

No Human Being Can Achieve All He Or She Desires In This Life Except In Dreams, So Good Night All.

Some People Spend Their Entire Lives Reading But Never Get Beyond Reading The Words On The Page, They Don't Understand That The Words Are Merely Stepping Stones Placed Across A Fast-flowing River, And The Reason They're There Is So That We Can Reach The Farther Shore, It's The Other Side That Matters...

Men Are All The Same, They Think That Because They Came Out Of The Belly Of A Woman They Know All There Is To Know About Women.

Words Were Not Given To Man In Order To Conceal His Thoughts.

Writer's Make National Literature, While Translators Make Universal Literature.

Ah, In Every Age There Is Always Some New Wonder To Astound Mankind Until They Grow Accustomed To It And Lose Interest.

...we Confidently Say That It's Not Worth Trying To Reach Any Conclusions Merely Because We Decide To Stop Halfway Along The Path That Would Lead Us Straight To Them.

I Don't Think It Is Worth Explaining How A Character's Nose Or Chin Looks. It Is My Feeling That Readers Will Prefer To Construct, Little By Little, Their Own Characterthe Author Will Do Well To Entrust The Reader With This Part Of The Work.

We All Have Our Moments Of Weakness, Just As Well That We Are Still Capable Of Weeping, Tears Are Often Our Salvation, There Are Times When We Would Die If We Did Not Weep - Blindness

Can You Imagine What Bush Would Say If Someone Like Hugo Chavez Asked Him For A Little Piece Of Land To Install A Military Base, And He Only Wanted To Plant A Venezuelan Flag There?

The Wisest Man I Ever Knew In My Whole Life Could Not Read Or Write.

Though I Had Come Into The World On 16 November 1922, My Official Documents Show That I Was Born Two Days Later, On The 18th. It Was Thanks To This Petty Fraud That My Family Escaped From Paying The Fine For Not Having Registered My Birth At The Proper Legal Time.

. . . If There Is A Way For The World To Be Transformed For The Better, It Can Only Be Done By Pessimism; Optimists Will Never Change The World For The Better.

A Woman Is Essentially A Vessel Made To Be Filled.

From Literature To Ecology, From The Escape Velocity Of Galaxies To The Greenhouse Effect, From Garbage Disposal Methods To Traffic Jams, Everything Is Discussed In Our World. But The Democratic System, As If It Were A Given Fact, Untouchable By Nature Until The End Of Time, We Don't Discuss That.

Garbage Disposal

Americans Have Discovered Fear.

The Wise Man Contents Himself With What He Has, Until Such Time As He Invents Something Better.

This Is The Effect Of Panic, A Natural Effect, You Could Say That Animal Nature Is Like This, Plant Life Would Behave In Exactly The Same Way, Too, If It Did Not Have All Those Roots To Hold It In The Ground, And How Nice It Would Be To See The Trees Of The Forest Fleeing The Flames.

We Never Consider That The Things Dogs Know About Us Are Things Of Which We Have Not The Faintest Notion.

Even Death, Faced With The Option Of Death Or Life, She Would Choose Life.

Without The Faintest Possibility Of Finding A Job, I Decided To Devote Myself To Literature: It Was About Time To Find Out What I Was Worth As A Writer.

A Tree Weeps When Cut Down, A Dog Howls When Beaten, But A Man Matures When Offended.

We Are So Afraid Of The Idea Of Having To Die... That We Always Try To Find Excuses For The Dead, As If We Were Asking Beforehand To Be Excused When It Is Our Turn.

Words Have Their Own Hierarchy, Their Own Protocol, Their Own Artistic Titles, Their Own Plebeian Stigmas.

The Best Way To Killing A Rose Is To Force It Open When It Is Still Only The Promise Of A Bud.

As So Often Happens, The Thing Left Undone Tires You Most Of All, You Only Feel Rested When It Has Been Accomplished.

I Was Born In A Family Of Landless Peasants, In Azinhaga, A Small Village In The Province Of Ribatejo, On The Right Bank Of The Almonda River, Around A Hundred Kilometres North-east Of Lisbon.

Such Is Our Need To Shower Blame On Some Distant Entity When It Is We Who Lack The Courage To Face Up To What Is There Before Us.

Lord Knows Why They Depict Death With Wings When Death Is Everywhere.

It Is Strange How The Elderly Fall Silent When They Ought To Go On Speaking, Obliging The Young To Learn Everything From Scratch.

Words That Come From The Heart Are Never Spoken, They Get Caught In The Throat And Can Only Be Read In Ones's Eyes.

A Journey Never Ends. Only The Travellers End.

Forgive Me If What Has Seemed Little To You, To Me Is All.

Jeronimo, My Grandfather, Swine-herder And Story-teller, Feeling Death About To Arrive And Take Him, Went And Said Goodbye To The Trees In The Yard, One By One, Embracing Them And Crying Because He Knew He Wouldn't See Them Again. To Truly Appreciate Life We Must Remember That Nothing Lasts For Ever And Take Nothing We Enjoy For Granted. In So Doing We Stay Grateful And Happy For All Our Good Fortune.

If We Cannot Live Entirely Like Human Beings, At Least Let Us Do Everything In Our Power Not To Live Entirely Like Animals.

There Are Plenty Of Reasons Not To Put Up With The World As It Is, And If The Book Has Any Kind Of Message, I Suppose That's It.

I Believe That I've Been Asked All Possible Questions. I, Myself, If I Were A Journalist, Would Not Know What To Ask Me.

I Can't Imagine Myself Outside Any Kind Of Social Or Political Involvement. Yes, I'm A Writer, But I Live In This World, And My Writing Doesn't Exist On A Separate Level. And If People Know Who I Am And Read My Books, Well, Good; That Way, If I Have Something More To Say, Then Everyone Benefits.

...this Is The Way Fate Usually Treats Us, It's Right There Behind Us, It Has Already Reached Out A Hand To Touch Us On The Shoulder While We're Still Muttering To Ourselves, It's All Over, That's It, Who Cares Anyhow.

... That's How Life Should Be, When One Person Loses Heart, The Other Must Have Heart And Courage Enough For Both.

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Gottfried Leibniz

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