Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz Quotes

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Inside: A collection of famous quotes from Sor Juana de la Inés, in both Spanish and English.

Featured Image: “sor Juana Inés de la Cruz” (CC BY 2.0) by M. Martin Vicente

Sor Juana Inés was a self-taught scholar and nun during Mexico’s colonial period. She is famous for being a writer, poet, and philosopher– and perhaps the first feminist– at a time when women had little chance to be those things.

Here’s what you can find in this post:

1. Sor Juana’s Childhood

2. Sor Juana Inés, Nun

3. Sor Juana Inés Quotes in English

4. Sor Juana Inés Quotes in Spanish

5. Poem, Hombres necios

6. Videos about the Life of Sor Juana Inés

Sor Juana’s Childhood

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was born with the name Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramirez de Santanilla. She was born November 12, 1648 in San Miguel Nepantla (in Mexico, which at that time was called New Spain).

Her mother came from a wealthy Spanish family, but had her children out of wedlock and Juana’s father abandoned them. However, her grandparents supported them and Sor Juana was later sent to live with relatives in Mexico City, where she would have more opportunities. She was invited to be a lady-in-waiting at court, in 1664.

Sor Juana was fluent Spanish, Latin and could write in Nahuatl. Even though her mother was illiterate, Sor Juana was an avid reader, and learned to read at age 3. She educated herself in the family’s library, mostly made up with her grandfather’s books.

At court, Sor Juana’s writing gained an audience. Her famous poem, Hombres necios, caused a stir– both negative and positive. Despite receiving various offers of marriage, she entered a convent at age 20, where she continued to write.

Life as a Nun

In those times, convents secured a chance for single women to study and maintain intellectual pursuits.

At first, she joined the Discalced Carmelites, but moved to the Convent of Santa Paula of the Hieronymite. At Santa Paula, she took her vows and stayed until almost the end of her life.

As a nun, Sor Juana was able to devote herself to study and writing. In addition, she taught at the girls’ school, had duties in the nunnery, and compiled a library for the convent. Under her guidance, the collection became one of the largest private librares in the New World.

Sor Juan’s writing and poetry covered a wide range of genres: she is known for her sonnets, ballads, dramas, critiques, and plays.

Because of her views on the patriarchy and the treatment of women, the Bishop of Puebla condemned her. She was forced to sell her books for charity, stop writing, and devote herself to caring for the sick.

She died April 17, 1695, while helping to treat her sister nuns during an epidemic in Mexico City.

According to scholar Alejandro Soriando Vallés, he views Cruz’s faith as “framed in one of these two ‘sides’: anti-establishment criticism, which raises the confrontation of the nun with the establishment, and the Catholic one, supportive of the notion of her fidelity to orthodoxy.” This is significant to note in that it offers a powerful example of the type of negotiation that religious women had to undergo to attempt to get the Catholic Church to understand their voice after continuously silencing them. These contrary ideas showcase the clash between her obligations as a nun and her desire to continue her studies, a major difficulty of Cruz’s life, as discussed prior. While her efforts ultimately failed, her voice prevailed centuries later.
– Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Latin America´s First Feminist

Sor Juana de la Inés Quotes in English

1. “I don’t study to know more, but to ignore less.”

– Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz

2. “Foolish men who accuse women without reason,, not seeing that you are the cause of the very thing you blame.”

– Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz

3. “For now, this afternoon…you saw and touched
my heart, dissolved and liquid in your hands.”

–Esta tarde, mi bien, Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz

4. “For those who are with greatness born
Should live not for themselves alone.”

— Poems, Protest, and a Dream: Selected Writings by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

5. “I walk beneath your pens, and am not what I truly am, but what you’d prefer to imagine me.”

– “Las inimitables plumas,” Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz

6. “And what shall I tell you, lady, of the natural secrets I have discovered while cooking? … “One can perfectly well philosophize while cooking supper”.And I often say, when observing these details: had Aristotle prepared victuals, he would have written more.”

– Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz. Milano-Varese, Istituto Editoriale Cisalpino,1953, Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz

7. “But who has prohibited women private and individual studies? Do they not have a rational soul like men? … What divine revelation, what determination of the Church, what dictate of reason made for us such a severe law?”

– Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, in Autodefensa Espiritual (translated from Tapia Mendez 1993).

8. O World, why do you wish to persecute me?
How do I offend you, when I intend
only to fix beauty in my intellect,
and never my intellect fix on beauty?

– Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz

I do not set store by treasures or riches;
and therefore it always brings me more joy
only to fix riches in my intellect
and never my intellect fix on riches.

– Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Selected Works (2014)

9. Everything that you receive is not measured according to its actual size, but, rather that of the receiving vessel.

– Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz

10. “I believed, when I entered this convent,
I was escaping from myself, but alas,
poor me, I brought myself with me!”

– Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz

11. “Critics: In your sight
no woman can win:
keep you out, and she’s too tight;
she’s too loose if you get in.”

– Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz

12. “Must I dwell in slavery’s night And all pleasure take its flight Far beyond my feeble sight, Forever?”

– Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz

13. “Better far it be
To destroy vanity within my life
Than to destroy my life in vanity.”

– Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz

14. “…And it is not enough in the world for a wise brain to be ridiculed, it must also be wounded & mistreated; a head that is a treasury of wisdom should not expect any crown other than one of thorns. What garland can human wisdom expect when it sees what divine wisdom received?”
― Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Selected Writings

17. “Privation is the cause of appetite…”

– Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz

Sor Juana de la Inés Quotes in Spanish

1. “Yo no estudio para escribir, ni menos para enseñar (que fuera en mí desmedida soberbia), sino sólo por ver si con estudiar ignoro menos. Así lo respondo y así lo siento.”

– Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz

2. “Hombres necios que acusáis
a la mujer sin razón,
sin ver que sois la ocasión
de lo mismo que culpáis.”

– Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz

3. “Esta tarde, mi bien, cuando te hablaba…pues ya en líquido humor viste y tocaste mi corazón deshecho entre tus manos.”

– Esta tarde, mi bien, Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz

4. “¿O cuál es más de culpar,
aunque cualquiera mal haga:
la que peca por la paga
o el que paga por pecar?”

– Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz

5. Entre vuestras plumas ando,
no como soy, sino como
quisisteis imaginarlo.

– “Las inimitables plumas,” Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz

6. “¿Pues qué os pudiera contar, Señora, de los secretos naturales que he descubierto estando guisando? Que bien se puede filosofar y aderezar la cena. Y yo suelo decir viendo estas cosillas: Si Aristóteles hubiera guisado, mucho más hubiera escrito.”

– Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz. Milano-Varese, Istituto Editoriale Cisalpino,1953, Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz

7. Pero los estudios privados y particulares, ¿quién los ha prohibido a las mujeres? ¿No tienen ellas alma racional como los hombres? Esa alma racional de las mujeres ¿no es capaz de tanta gracia y gloria de Dios como la suya. Pues ¿por qué no será capaz de tantas noticias y ciencias, que es menos? ¿Qué revelación divina, qué determinación de la Iglesia, qué dictamen de la razón hizo para nosotras tan severa ley?

– Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz

8. “¿En perseguirme, mundo, qué interesas?
¿En qué te ofendo, cuando sólo intento
poner bellezas en mi entendimiento
y no mi entendimiento en las bellezas?

Yo no estimo tesoros ni riquezas;
y así, siempre me causa más contento
poner riquezas en mi pensamiento
que no mi pensamiento en las riquezas.”

– Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz

9. “Todo lo que se recibe, no se mensura al tamaño que en sí tiene, sino al modo que es del recipiente vaso.”

– Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz

Hombres Necios

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s most famous poem is probably Hombres Necios, which described and decried the double standard applied to men and women. Here is the original version in Spanish:

“Hombres necios que acusáis
a la mujer sin razón,
sin ver que sois la ocasión
de lo mismo que culpáis:

si con ansia sin igual
solicitáis su desdén,
¿por qué queréis que obren bien
si las incitáis al mal?

Combatís su resistencia
y luego, con gravedad,
decís que fue liviandad
lo que hizo la diligencia.

Dan vuestras amantes penas
a sus libertades alas,
y después de hacerlas malas
las queréis hallar muy buenas.

¿Cuál mayor culpa ha tenido
en una pasión errada:
la que cae de rogada,
o el que ruega de caído?

¿O cuál es más de culpar,
aunque cualquiera mal haga:
la que peca por la paga,
o el que paga por pecar?

Pues, ¿para qué os espantáis
de la culpa que tenéis?
Queredlas cual las hacéis
o hacedlas cual las buscáis.

Dejad de solicitar,
y después, con más razón,
acusaréis la afición
de la que os fuere a rogar.

Bien con muchas armas fundo
que lidia vuestra arrogancia,
pues en promesa e instancia
juntáis diablo, carne y mundo.”

– Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz

See a beautiful English translation here. In the meantime, here are two of my favorite stanzas:

“Presumptuous beyond belief,
you’d have the woman you pursue
be Thais when you’re courting her,
Lucretia once she falls to you.

…With you, no woman can hope to score;
whichever way, she’s bound to lose;
spurning you, she’s ungrateful—
succumbing, you call her lewd.”