Top 500 Isabel Allende Quotes (2026 Update)
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451. “Considering the circumstances, it was a rather good kiss. In reality, it would have been perfect if they both had not been coughing from the smoke.”

— Isabel Allende

452. “El individualismo se consideraba una forma de demencia.”

— Isabel Allende

453. “It was a long week of penitence and fasting, during which there were no card games and no music that might lead to lust or abandon; and within the limits of possibility, the strictest sadness and chastity were observed, even though it was precisely at this time that the forked tail of the devil pricked most insistently at Catholic flesh.”

— Isabel Allende

454. “Years sneak by quickly, on tiptoe, scoffing, and suddenly they give us a fright in the mirror or smack us on the back. Every minute is precious and we can’t waste it on misunderstanding, impatience, jealousy, pettiness, or the other silly stuff that soils relationships. In truth this formula can be applied at any age because it’s always the case that our days are limited. If I had lived this.”

— Isabel Allende

455. “Ya no es necesario, podemos ejercer nuestro poder desde la feminidad. Como Eliza, adquirimos libertad y seguimos luchando para preservarla, ampliarla y lograr que alcance para todas.”

— Isabel Allende

456. “There’s no feminism without economic independence.”

— Isabel Allende

457. “I don’t look bad despite my age, do I? The few friends I have left look like iguanas.”

— Isabel Allende

458. “In Chile it is bad manners to acknowledge that you’re overly satisfied, because that can irritate the less fortunate, which is why for us the correct answer to the question “How are you?” is “So-so.” That is an opening for sympathizing with the other speaker’s situation.”

— Isabel Allende

459. “I realized also that in Nahuel, that town of hospitable neighbors, you only had to scratch the surface to uncover the ugliest of vices, though my mentors insisted that cruelty wasn’t inherent to the human condition, merely something born of ignorance and poverty. “It’s much easier to be generous with a full belly than an empty one,” they said. I’ve never believed that, though, because I’ve seen that both kindness and cruelty exist everywhere.”

— Isabel Allende

460. “All husbands are boring... No woman with ounce of sense gets married to be entertained, she marries to be maintained.”

— Isabel Allende

461. “Girls are denied the right to be angry and to thrash about.”

— Isabel Allende

462. “I never accepted the limited feminine role imposed upon me by my family, society, culture, and religion. At fifteen I walked away from the church forever, not for lack of faith – that cam later – but because of the inherent machismo of all religious organizations. I cannot belong to an institution that considers me a second-class member whose authorities, always male, enjoy complete impunity and enforce their rules with dogma.”

— Isabel Allende

463. “The idea that everyone was equal was fine as a theoretical slogan, he said, but in practice it was an aberration. We are not equal in the eyes of.”

— Isabel Allende

464. “No one gives you anything in life, Teresa would say, you have to take it by force, and as soon as you get careless they’ll take it back.”

— Isabel Allende

465. “I was so drained I felt as if I were staring through a telescope at the light of a star dead for a million years.”

— Isabel Allende

466. “According to the Dalai Lama, the only hope for peace and prosperity lies in the hands of women in the West.”

— Isabel Allende

467. “Don’t think you’re so special – remember that the nail that sticks out is the one the hammer hits.”

— Isabel Allende

468. “Cada persona nace con una sola gracia la felicidad consiste en descubrirla a tiempo...”

— Isabel Allende

469. “He had had his mouth washed out with soap so often that he stopped calling Rosette his sister, but not enough to make him stop loving her with that terrible, possessive, absolute love that solitary children give.”

— Isabel Allende

470. “I didn’t get to prepare myself as well as I would’ve liked, and now there’s a lady, who must be death, sitting at the foot of my bed, motioning for me to follow her. I can’t distinguish clearly between night and day, and it doesn’t matter, because pain and memory aren’t measured with clocks. The morphine puts me to sleep and transports me to the dimension of dreams and visions.”

— Isabel Allende

471. “I think of my destiny as an expatriate. It is my fate to wander from place to place, and to adapt to new soils. I believe I will be able to do that because handfuls of Chilean soil are caught in my roots; I carry them with me always.”

— Isabel Allende

472. “Our homeland is where our dead are buried.”

— Isabel Allende

473. “Like a luminous spiderweb, Popo. The threads of that web connect everything that exists. I can’t explain it to you. When you die, you’re going to travel like that comet, and I’ll be right behind, attached to your tail.” “We’ll be astral dust.”

— Isabel Allende

474. “Love doesn’t grow like a wild plant, it needs a lot of care.”

— Isabel Allende

475. “Estaba harta de contemplar desde abajo los vellos de la nariz del resto de la humanidad.”

— Isabel Allende

476. “It’s hard to make money working; and the harder the work, the worse the pay. It takes effort not to lose everything and end up on the street. It’s easy, on the other hand, to get rich without producing anything, moving money from one place to another, speculating, taking advantage of stock opportunities, investing in the hard work of others.”

— Isabel Allende

477. “Patriarchy is imposed with aggression; it demands obedience and punishes those who defy it.”

— Isabel Allende

478. “Many of us daughters have had to live the lives that our mothers could not.”

— Isabel Allende

479. “They’re really good people. Quakers are always to be found where they’re most needed.”

— Isabel Allende

480. “Irina could not imagine the courage it took to grow old without becoming too frightened; her knowledge of age.”

— Isabel Allende

481. “My maternal aunts and uncles, the Barros, were twelve rather eccentric brothers and sisters, though none was hopelessly mad.”

— Isabel Allende

482. “They all agreed that under communism they had been just as poor, but at least there was food and security, whereas independence had brought them only ruin and abandonment.”

— Isabel Allende

483. “No, literature was definitely not a reasonable career path in a country like Chile where intellectual scorn for women was absolute.”

— Isabel Allende

484. “The spotless order of barracks and the artificial peace of fear reigned everywhere.”

— Isabel Allende

485. “He felt that Christianity, like almost all forms of superstition, made men weaker and more resigned, and that the point was not to await some reward in the sky but to fight for one’s rights on earth.”

— Isabel Allende

486. “But that’s how nostalgia is: a slow dance in a large circle. Memories don’t organize themselves chronologically, they’re like smoke, changing, ephemeral, and if they’re not written down they fade into oblivion.”

— Isabel Allende

487. “I have lived in a rough sea where waves would lift me and then drop me to the bottom.”

— Isabel Allende

488. “Docility, praised as a feminine virtue, is our worst enemy; it has never served us well, it is only convenient for men.”

— Isabel Allende

489. “Exert some independence; you’re not a little girl. You can’t let anyone else decide things for you. You have to take care of yourself in this world,” she said.”

— Isabel Allende

490. “It was a long night, perhaps the longest in my life. I spent it sitting next to Rosa’s tomb, speaking with her, accompanying her on the first part of her journey to the Hereafter, which is when it’s hardest to detach yourself from earth and you need the love of those who have remained behind, so you can leave with at least the consolation of having planted something in someone else’s heart.”

— Isabel Allende

491. “The General was right. No one dies of hunger here – you reach out your hand and pluck a mango. That’s why there is no progress. Cold countries have more advanced civilizations because the climate forces people to work.”

— Isabel Allende

492. “To love a place you must participate in the community and give back something in return for all you receive. I believe I have done that. There are many things I admire about the United States and others I would like to change, but isn’t that always true? A country, like a husband, is always open to improvement.”

— Isabel Allende

493. “I related my impressions of La Paz, its purple mountains, its hermetic Indians, and its air, so thin that your lungs are always on the verge of filling with foam and your mind with hallucinations.”

— Isabel Allende

494. “I need nothing, he told himself with the cunning pride of those with a calling for solitude.”

— Isabel Allende

495. “Question from a journalist to the Dalai Lama: Can you remember your past lives? Answer: At my age it’s hard to remember what happened yesterday.”

— Isabel Allende

496. “Dicen que nunca se termina un libro, que simplemente el autor se da por vencido.”

— Isabel Allende

497. “They’re not dead, Lenny. They’re more alive now than ever. That’s what happens with age: stories from the past come alive and stick to our skin. I’m so pleased we’re going to spend the next few years together.”

— Isabel Allende

498. “Pentru mine a fost o surpriza sa descopar ca lumea e violenta si pradalnica, guvernata de legea implacabila a celor mai puternici. Selectia naturala n-a servit la inflorirea inteligentei si la evolutia spiritului, cu prima ocazie ne casapim reciproc, exact ca sobolanii inchisi intr-o cusca prea mica.”

— Isabel Allende

499. “I could never have invented such a clan. Actually, I had no need to, with a family like mine you don’t need imagination.”

— Isabel Allende

500. “Miss Rose has decided that Eliza would have learning, dowry, and fame as a beauty even if she was not one, because it was her view that beauty is a question of style. Any woman who conducts herself with the queenly assurance of a belle, she maintained, will convince everyone that she is beautiful.”

— Isabel Allende