Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Philippine Literature Quotes

Philippine Literature Quotes

 A guide for students in Philippine Literature 

 “Oh, the stories I can tell you, if you but have the time to listen, but you are going away.  Everybody is going someplace.  They are all in a hurry; they will not listen to me.  And those who will tarry here forever, they have no ears for my stories, because they have seen them happen everywhere, and they don’t want them told, they are commonplace, they say they should be hushed and forgotten …
Bienvenido Santos, The Door
 Bienvenido N. Santos (1911–1996)  
Filipino-American fiction, poetry and nonfiction writer.


“I use the word culture in its broadest sense as denoting the sum-total of a nation’s achievements in art, religion, science, and letters; their philosophy and way of life; the ideals and instrumentalities by which they live.  Our culture, then , is the continuity of our traditional life, the whole body of the intellectual, moral, and spiritual values which have come down to us as our heritage after centuries of accretion and evolution.”
 Salvador P. Lopez, The Problem of Our Culture  
 Ilokano writer,  journalist, educator, diplomat, and statesman.

“Literature mirrors the depth of a culture and manifests the truly creative genius of the race.  The Greeks were remembered not as much for the world-renowned warriors as for their writers, philosophers and artists.”

- TT del Castillo and BS Medina Jr,  Introduction Philippine Literature

Nesting Swallow in a Museum



Dr Abe V Rotor
Museum of Natural History, UPLB, Laguna


It's alive, this elusive bird called swallow or swift, 
     Golondrina in Mexican folklore;
I thought it was just one of the stuffed specimens; 
     but here a nest she sits on and nothing more.
 
What message does this bird convey, why of all places 
     the museum? Did it come from a foreign shore? 
I wonder if she has kin from where she came, and where; 
     and here a nest she sits on and nothing more. ~