Pablo Neruda Quotes

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

“As if you were on fire from within.
The moon lives in the lining of your skin.”

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

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

“Don't go far off, not even for a day,
because I don't know how to say it ? a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in
an empty station when the trains are
parked off somewhere else, asleep.
Don't leave me, even for an hour, because then
the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.
Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve
on the beach, may your eyelids never flutter
into the empty distance. Don't LEAVE me for
a second, my dearest, because in that moment you'll
have gone so far I'll wander mazily
over all the earth, asking, will you
come back? Will you leave me here, dying?”

“Give me silence, water, hope
Give me struggle, iron, volcanoes.”

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

“I got lost in the night, without the light
of your eyelids, and when the night surrounded me
I was born again: I was the owner of my own darkness.”

“I hunger for your sleek laugh and your hands the color of a furious harvest. I want to eat the sunbeams flaring in your beauty.”

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

“If suddenly you do not exist,
If suddenly you are not living,
I shall go on living.
I do not dare,
I do not dare to write it,
if you die.
I shall go on living.”

“Laughter is the language of the soul.”

“Let us forget with generosity those who cannot love us.”

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

“My feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping but I shall go on living.”

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

“The books that help you most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.”

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

“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.”

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

“At night I dream that you and I are two plants
that grew together, roots entwined,
and that you know the earth and the rain like my mouth,
since we are made of earth and rain.”

“I want you to know
one thing.
You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.
If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.
If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.
But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.”

“I am no longer in love with her, that's certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”

“I have named you queen.
There are taller than you, taller.
There are purer than you, purer.
There are lovelier than you, lovelier.
But you are the queen.
When you go through the streets
No one recognizes you.
No one sees your crystal crown, no one looks
At the carpet of red gold
That you tread as you pass,
The nonexistent carpet.
And when you appear
All the rivers sound
In my body, bells
Shake the sky,
And a hymn fills the world.
Only you and I,
Only you and I, my love,
Listen to it.”

“I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.”

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

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

“Love! Love until the night collapses!”

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

“I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.”