Beautiful Losers (1966)
Context: What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is the caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love.
Leonard Cohen: Quotes about love (page 2)
Leonard Cohen was Canadian poet and singer-songwriter. Explore interesting quotes on love.
"Sisters of Mercy"
Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967)
Context: When they lay down beside me I made my confession to them.
They touched both my eyes and I touched the dew on their hem.
If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn,
They will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem.
“Show me slowly what I only
know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love”
Source: Leonard Cohen: Poems and Songs
"You Have Loved Enough"
Ten New Songs (2001)
Context: I swept the marble chambers,
But you sent me down below.
You kept me from believing
Until you let me know:
That I am not the one who loves —
It's love that chooses me.
When hatred with his package comes,
You forbid delivery.
“Every heart to love will come
But like a refugee.”
"Anthem"
The Future (1992)
On the lyrics to "You Have Loved Enough" in an interview released at the Ten New Songs site (2001)
“Here is your cross,
Your nails and your hill;
And here is your love,
That lists where it will”
"Here It Is"
Ten New Songs (2001)
“Rust rust rust
in the engines of love and time”
"Front Lawn", Flowers for Hitler (1964)