Pablo Neruda Quotes

“Love is so short and forgetting is so long.”

“I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.”

“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.”

“If nothing saves us from death, at least love should save us from life”

“But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me.”

“Love! Love until the night collapses!”

“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.”
— Pablo Neruda
From 100 Love Sonnets
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“Let us forget with generosity those who cannot love us”

“It is time, love, to break off that sombre rose,
shut up the stars and bury the ash in the earth;
and, in the rising of the light, wake with those who awoke
or go on in the dream, reaching the other shore of the sea which has no other shore.”

“Love is the mystery of water and a star.”

“My soul is an empty carousel at sunset.”

“sometimes i get up at dawn, and even my soul is wet.”

“Laughter is the language of the soul.”

“I remembered you with my soul clenched”

“And something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and I suddenly saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open.”

“You are like nobody since I love you.”

“It was at that age
that poetry came in search of me.”

“While I'm writing, I'm far away;
and when I come back, I've gone.”

“Everything is ceremony in the wild garden of childhood.”

“I love all things, not only the grand but the infinitely small: thimble, spurs, plates, flower vases…..”

“Your wide eyes are the only light I know from extinguished constellations.”

“He who does not travel, who does not read,
who does not listen to music,
who does not find grace in himself,
she who does not find grace in herself,
dies slowly.
He who slowly destroys his own self-esteem,
who does not allow himself to be helped”

“Sufre mas el que espera siempre
que aquel que nunca espero a nadie?

Does he who is always waiting suffer more than he who’s never waited for anyone?”

“I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;”

“They can cut all the flowers, but they can't stop the spring…”

“Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.”

“The moon lives in the lining of your skin.”

“so I wait for you like a lonely house
till you will see me again and live in me.
Till then my windows ache.”

“And one by one the nights between our separated cities are joined to the night that unites us.”

“It was my destiny to love and say goodbye.”

“In what language does rain fall over tormented cities?”

“Green was the silence, wet was the light,
the month of June trembled like a butterfly.”

“Do tears not yet spilled wait in small lakes?”

“I have slept with you all night long while the dark earth spins with the living and the dead, and on waking suddenly in the midst of the shadow my arm encircled your waist. Neither night nor sleep could separate us.”

“Poetry is an act of peace. Peace goes into the making of a poet as flour goes into the making of bread.”

“By night, Love, tie your heart to mine, and the two
together in their sleep will defeat the darkness”

“In the eyes of mourning the land of dreams begins.”

“About me, nothing worse they will tell you, my love, than what I told you”

“How much does a man live, after all?/ Does he live a thousand days, or one only?
For a week, or for several centuries?/ How long does a man spend dying?/ What does it mean to say 'for ever'?”

“Absence is a house so vast that inside you will pass through its walls and hang pictures on the air.”

“With which stars do they go on speaking, the rivers that never reach the sea?”

“We must dream our way.”

“I am everybody and every time,
I always call myself by your name.”

“Like a jar you housed the infinite tenderness, and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.”

“He who has nothing—it has been said many times—has nothing to lose but his chains.”

“I need the sea because it teaches me”

“A bibliophile of little means is likely to suffer often. Books don't slip from his hands but fly past him through the air, high as birds, high as prices.”

“Sometimes a piece of sun
burned like a coin in my hand.”

“Where were you then?
Who else was there?
Saying what?
Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly
when I am sad and feel you are far away?”

“I will bring you flowers from the mountains, bluebells,
dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.
I want to do with you
what spring does with the cherry trees.”

“Take bread away from me, if you wish,
take air away, but
do not take from me your laughter.”

“Like them you are tall and taciturn, and you are sad, all at once, like a voyage.”

“and everything burned in blue, everything a star”

“A book,
a book full
of human touches,
of shirts,
a book
without loneliness, with men
and tools,
a book
is victory.”

“I move in the university of the waves.”

“Si todos los rios son dulces
de donde saca sal el mar?

If all rivers are sweet
where does the sea get its salt?”

“She did not speak for speech was unknown to her.”

“When everything seems to be set to show me off as intelligent, the fool I always keep hidden takes over all that I say.”

“I am alone with rickety materials,
the rain falls on me, and it is like me,
it is like me in its raving, alone in the dead world,
repulsed as it falls, and with no persistent form.”

“In love, you have loosened yourself like seawater”

“Do thoughts of love fall
into extinct volcanoes?”

“Is there a star more wide open
than the word 'poppy""""?”

“Someday, somewhere - anywhere, unfailingly, you'll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life.”

“To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life.”

“In this part of the story I am the one who
dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
because I love you, Love, in fire and in blood.”

“We the mortals touch the metals,
the wind, the ocean shores, the stones,
knowing they will go on, inert or burning,
and I was discovering, naming all the these things:
it was my destiny to love and say goodbye.”