Welcome to the second in our series on inspirational Spanish quotes.
If you’re studying Spanish, you’ll know that learning new vocabulary can be a big pain in the butt bit of a chore. It’s never a good idea to try to learn long lists of words, and it’s generally difficult to learn vocabulary without a surrounding context to give meaning to each word.
So our Spanish graphic designer has dug out some of her favourite inspirational Spanish quotes, and made this lovely series of images.
Feel free to download as many images as you like (right click -> save image) or upload to Pinterest or any other social media platform.
You can check out our first set of inspirational quotes in Spanish here.
A good one for weather words
- Por muy larga que sea la tormenta, el siempre vuelve a brillar entre las nubes.
However long the storm, the sun will always shine again amongst the clouds.
A tricky one to translate
- La raíz de los problemas es irse por las ramas.
The root of the problem is trying to avoid it.
This one doesn’t make much sense in English because the quote is based on an idiomatic Spanish expression:
Irse por las ramas = To go around a problem in order to avoid dealing with it / To not get to the point
Is this one from Rocky IV?
- Cuanto mayor es la dificultad, mayor es la gloria.
The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory.
A nice little reminder…
- El mundo está lleno de buenas personas. Si no las encuentras, sé una de ellas.
The world is full of good people. If you can’t find one, become one.
This is a good example of the verb Ser in the imperative form.
Imperative in Positive and Negative
- No odies a quien te odia, quiere a quien te quiere.
Don’t hate those who hate you, love those who love you.
Did you notice how Spanish uses the subjunctive form for the negative imperative?
The imperative tense again
- Hagas lo que hagas, hazlo con pasión.
Whatever you do, do it with passion.
Another example of the subjunctive (hagas – hacer) with the imperative (haz – hacer). Don’t you just love the way we can just bolt a pronoun onto the end of the imperative? ¡Hazlo!
Think of the possibilities
- Deja de pensar en las limitaciones, empieza a pensar en las posibilidades
Stop thinking about the limitations and start thinking about the possibilities.
Did you see how this phrase once again uses the imperative form? Twice, in fact.
One for creative thinkers
- No necesitas alas para volar, solo imaginación.
You don’t need wings to fly, just imagination.
Be afraid, be very afraid
- El miedo existe, lo importante es que tus deseos sean más fuertes que él.
Fear exists. The most important thing is that your desires are stronger.
Spanish likes to use the impersonal pronoun ‘lo’ when talking about non-physical concepts. We’ll get to that in a future class!
Don’t worry about failure
- Sueña en grande y atrévete a fallar
Dream big and dare to fail.
Looking for more Spanish resources?
If you are looking for more materials for learning Spanish, then visit our Vocabulary section, with free posters and worksheets for you to download and print out.
What about videos?
If videos are more your thing, then we have our series on Basic Spanish Phrases for lower-level students, and an interview-based series, Real Spanish, for more advanced students.
