Greguerías
From Wikipedia:
A greguería is a short statement, usually one sentence, in which the author expresses a philosophical, pragmatic, or humorous idea in a witty and original way. A greguería is roughly similar to an aphorism or a one-liner joke in comedy. It is a rhetorical and stylistic device used in Spanish and Latin American literature.
Most of these are translated from the works of Ramón. Some of them can be found here.
Rain is melancholy because it takes us back to the time when we were fishes.
A thunderstorm is the first day at school all over again.
Electricity is God's nervous system.
The rainbow is a dry-cleaner's neon advert.
Some men with wooden legs turn green in Spring and rebecome satyrs.
The human ear is forever asking questions.
Our head is a fish-tank for ideas.
Dust is full of old and forgotten sneezes.
In the phone-book we are all Lilliputians.
An embrace is a necklace without a fastener.
After using toothpaste we bare our teeth like wild animals.
Some dirty skies look as if water-colourists had cleaned their brushes on them.
Seagulls are born from handkerchiefs waving goodbye on jetties.
The feline Raze of screws.
The hardest fish to land is a bar of soap in the bath.
Giblets are a chicken's greguerias.
The typing keyboard is the alphabet's false teeth. All are resolutely anthropomorphic.
Sometimes flies look as if they're trying to rip their heads off, sick to death of being flies.
The peach is a blonde with her hair parted in the middle.
Nature is sad. Have you ever seen a tree smile?
We thought of turtle soup when we saw the tureen on the creature's back.
Looking upwards in a narrow street yon see the sky's cleavage.
Sleep is a lost-property office.
Mussels are the sea's castanets.
Every statue is like a blind beggar holding out his hand for alms.
Nostalgia is the neuralgia of memory.
The moon is the wrong way round.
The sea spends its time throwing buckets of cold water on the land to bring it to its senses.
Every grave contains an alarm-clock set for the Last Judgement.
Consoling thought: worms die too.
The bagpiper wears his lungs and larynx outside his body.
A crocodile is a suitcase travelling on its own.
Flowers on the grave understand death all too well; cut, abandoned, they too feel dead.
Dogs are always sniffing for their master which they once had in another life.
A good painting is a postage stamp which a century sticks on itself in order to certify its delivery into the future.
He ate so much rice that he learned to speak Chinese.
Time is weightless, otherwise all humanity would have already been crushed.
Do not dress a child like a gnome because it might take to the woods.
A grey sky means that the day is going to be like those shown in black and white movie screens.
If we open our eyes while asleep, we see reality.
The soup's arrogance is in being so hot that it makes us wait for it.
'Y' is the champagne glass of the alphabet.
A man reading his newspaper by the light of a shop window is stealing the shop's electricity.
When we stoop for a fallen glove, we help death up.
The goldmines not yet discovered laugh the most sarcastic laugh of all: the laugh of glittering false teeth.
To be absolutely fair, one day I say 'yes' to everything and the next day 'no' to everything.
Only a given number of envelopes are to be written in a given lifetime. When we write the last permitted envelope, we shall die.
The fog was so thick that after it passed we found it had rubbed out all the shop signs.
The strawberry is made with the hearts of greenbirds.
Radar is still looking for God.
A, E, I, O, U, the five notes of the human piano.
Just as the ship is tempted by the Sirens, so the car is persecuted by Daphne, the goddess transformed into a tree, who tempts the car to commit suicide on her trunk.
I am rich thanks to all I cannot afford to buy.
As the waiters pile up chairs at the end of the in the cafe, they seem to be erecting a barricade to protect themselves as they start shooting us.
An alarm clock keeps embroidering the sheet of your life.
The food we eat consists of substitutes, we gradually become our own substitutes.
Men look at each other in corridors or foyers as though they were all expecting the same woman.
If only the neighbors were deaf, we could hammer nails in the whole day.
Seeing how many times telegraph wires are bound round the Earth, one could spin it again like a top if it ever came to rest.
A fly is a poor man's jewel.
He killed time in vengeful anticipation of what time was going to do to him.
When we post a letter in a mailbox we smile at having stored a secret in the middle of the street.
The orchestra of those killed by lightning considered a lightning conductor quite unnecessary.
Before the dawn breaks, it takes a cup of coffee in a bar on the edge of town.
Elevator: instant prison.
One day the desert sand will be so fine that you won't be able to walk on it.
He had ears ideal for lodging pencils, and so he had to take up business.
Rivers do not know their names.
Pancreatic juice is the most Greek juice we possess.
The spoon wakes up the sleeping coffee that we had forgotten to drink.
As far as the stars are concerned, we are always in a bottomless pit.
The electric fan is shaving the heat.
Snow is extinguished by water.
An ellipse may be differed as the curve made by a bread roll chucked by one diner to another at the family dinner.
Note that a leaf never falls on a swan: it would be fatal.
Linoleum covers the floor in Latin.
The sign "Beware of Pickpockets" that you see in zoos makes the animals proud of themselves.
When we sit on the edge of the bed we are convicts reflecting on our sentence.
Children's balloons are carried along the street frightened to death.
Sundials show the hours with the dagger that kills.
In the dreams of the bald man there is no shade.
False teeth: the frog that granny keeps in her mouth.
There's a moment when the light flickers in our bulbs as though the power company had made a mistake when changing reels.
In the train lavatory, we wash away the black crime of travelling.
Only a candle can weep itself to death.
The perfume of a beautiful woman leaps at us like a boy who wants to play with a man who is not his father.
Baker: a sculptor of flour.
Fish go in a single file, like tourists.
A cannibal may be defined as a consumer who consumes a consumer.
Meteorology: whetherology.
One of the saddest things about trains is that the windows on the right can never get to be the windows on the left.
The inside of a piano is a loom, and weaves tasseled veils.
Garlic practically drops onto amateurs chefs.
How strange life is! Always, the brush is left, but the glue is gone.
To prepare a bath carefully is like brewing good tea.
The violin bow sews, like needle and thread, notes and souls, souls and notes.
The spine is the cane we swallow at birth.
When a woman orders fruit salad for two, she perfects the original sin.
"Ditto" is a good pseudonym for plagiarism.
The laboratory rabbits murmur, "They wouldn't dare to do this if we were bears!"
The poet feeds himself on cookies from the moon.
Sometimes we wonder how terrible people survived The Great Flood with Noah and his family -- but we have to realize that they stowed away.
That unique, passionate fruit, the pomegranate, holds life ajar so we can see it.
The machine gun was born from the hunter's crazy desire to have a belt between the trigger and the barrel.
The unit of power for airplane engines shouldn't be horsepower, but hippogriffpower.
The artichoke is the food of carpenters, cabinetmakers and woodcarvers.
The hussars go around dressed as X-rays of themselves.
The train seems like the firecracker of the landscape.
I never know if the rooster's comb is a king's crown, or a peasant's cap.
When we call a shotgun wedding a "nuptial feast", it feels like the festival of the last dance.
The moon of the skyscrapers is not the same as the moon of the horizon.
The usher's flashlight leaves a stain of light on the suit.
Photographs plant us in the most unnatural poses, while pretending that they are the most natural.
The pair of eggs we eat seem like twins, but they're not even third cousins.
Mushrooms and toadstools come from the world of gnomes.
Every Saturday, Dante went to the theater to trim his laurels.
Plumes of grain tickle the wind.
A chicken is the only cook who knows how to make, out of a little corn with no eggs, an egg with no corn.
A man who cups his hand to his ear to hear seems to hunt for the fly of what is said.
The moon is a little mirror in which the nearby playful and impertinent sun reflects as he peeps over the balcony.
Women are so silly: pantyhose can't be wrinkled, but gloves can.
Ice sleeps in a glass of whisky like a crystal bell on a goat.
The spade is the ultimate friend of man: at first in the sandbox, at last in the grave.
Dogs show us their tongue as if we had taken them to the doctor.
The horsefly sings dirges for the flowers.
Haikus are poetic telegrams.
"T" is the hammer of the alphabet.
You know the chicken is grilled perfectly when it is the color of a violin.
Sparks are the sneezes of Satan.
The most important thing in life is not to die.
There are more germs on a banknote than dollars in a bank.
The have to use both your nostrils to perceive distant gardens.
There are no magicians anymore. Nowadays, everybody has crystal shoes!
Falcons are the hunting dogs of the sky.
Academics have to have the right to use their sleeping caps during lessons.
El Cid made a knot in his beard to conciliate those about to die.
The electric iron seems to serve coffee to the shirts.
The crocodile is a suitcase that travels on credit.
An orator is a wind instrument that one plays solo.
Dogs anxiously search for a dream they had in a past life.
The moon needs cats, but she cannot make what nobody gives her back.
Frogs are always right in the heat of a swimming contest.
English Saturday is a graft of Sunday and Friday.
A demon is nothing more than the smartest of monkeys.
The camel is always moth-eaten.
The moon is the bank of ruined metaphors.
The crocodile is a shoe with the nails pulled out.
A caterpillar of toothpaste.
"Bring me a bottle of carbonated water."
"Ah yes, the water that cramps and tastes like a sleeping foot."
The moon is the eye of an ox on the boat of the night.
All the jewelers blushed. They had seen a communist!
All cameras want to be accordions, and vice versa.
The moon and the sand made frenzied love.
The green lobster gets its red choler up when boiled.
We can't really enjoy the song of the nightingale, because we always doubt if it is really a nightingale.
The man carrying a double bass seems like an ant carrying a splinter that is too big for him.
The accordion juices musical lemons.
The Dictionary wants to say "Millionaire" in words.
The sea is always wanting to make corkscrews, but never quite succeeds.
The banana is a fruit dressed up in red skin.
The edges of the fog are rags.
The real turkey is a jubilant myth.
The swallow shrinks its shoulders in mid-flight
Camoens and Cervantes are like two friends in an asylum: one missing an eye, the other missing a hand.
La veuve de deux maris a droit à une carte de visite avec un w, c'est à dire double veuve.
On voit que le vent ne sait pas lire quand il feuillette les pages d'un livre à l'envers.
Dans le marche du temps, qu'est-ce qui nous tue? Le tic ou le tac?
Dans le lait des rêves il tombe toujours une mouche.
Les mouettes naissent des mouchoirs que l'on agite au départ du bateau.
Les parapluies sont des veufs qui portent le devil des ombrellas disparues.
La terre étant ronde, le kilomètre devrait être rond et non pas carré.
Le café au lait est une boisson mulâtresse.
Il ne faut pas oublier que, le jour du déluge, ceux qui savaient nager se noyèrent aussi.
Les arcs de triomphe sont des éléments pétrifiés.
La seule joie des gens mariés, c'est d'assister au mariage des autres... une joie diabolique.
Le train fait comme un serpenteau dans le paysage.
Les millions de microbes sur un billet de banque sont plus nombreaux que ceux que la banque dit posséder en capital.
La chenille du dentrifice.
Sur la girouette, le vent monte à bicyclette.
C'est dans les musées de sculpture que les papas entendent leurs enfants faire les remarques les plus insolites: "Papa, ma feuille, à moi, elle a pas encore poussé".
- Apportez-moi une bouteille d'eau avec des bulles.
- Ah, oui! dit le garçon. Je vois... Cette eau qui a un
goût de fourmi dans les jambes.
La bijouterie tout entière a rougi. Un communiste l'a regardée.
'Pain' est un mot très bref pour qu'on puisse en demander de toute urgence.
La civilisation devrait inventer les messageries par mouettes voyageuses.
Le jour où la lune achètera une voiture, la nuit sera beaucoup plus courte.
Erityisen makea miniluumutomaatti olisi halunnut syntyä hedelmäksi.
Astronomian opiskelija ryhtyi hitsaajaksi.
Simaämpäri: rusinoiden nuoruudenlähde.