Quotes by Pablo Neruda

I learned about lifefrom life itself,love I learned in a single kissand could teach no one anythingexcept that I have livedwith something in common among men.

Joyful, joyful, joyful,as only dogs know how to be happywith only the autonomyof their shameless spirit.

Take bread away from me, if you wish,take air away, butdo not take from me your laughter.

Child who does not play is not a child, but the man who does not play has lost forever the child who lived within him and who he will miss terribly

I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you

Here I came to the very edge where nothing at all needs saying, everything is absorbed through weather and the sea, and the moon swam back, its rays all silvered, and time and again the darkness would be broken by the crash of a wave, and every day on the balcony of the sea, wings open, fire is born, and everything is blue again like morning.

I had no more alphabetthan the journeying of the swallows,the pure and tiny waterof the small, fiery birdthat dances rising from the pollen.

You came to my lifewith what you were bringing,madeof light and bread and shadow I expected you,and Like this I need you,Like this I love you,and to those who want to hear tomorrowthat which I will not tell them, let them read it here,and let them back off today because it is earlyfor these arguments.

So close that your hand upon my chest is mine,so close that your eyes close with my sleep.

You will fall with me as a stone in the grave

While Im writing, Im far away;and when I come back, Ive gone.

The books that help you most are those which make you think that 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.

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

You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming.

Peace goes into the making of a poem as flour goes into the making of bread.

“Then I speak to her in a language she has never heard, I speak to her in Spanish, in the tongue of the long, crepuscular verses of Díaz Casanueva; in that language in which Joaquín Edwards preaches nationalism. My discourse is profound; I speak with eloquence and seduction; my words, more than from me, issue from the warm nights, from the many solitary nights on the Red Sea, and when the tiny dancer puts her arm around my neck, I understand that she understands. Magnificent language!”

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

“Soy el desesperado, la palabra sin ecos, el que lo perdiò todo, y el que todo lo tuvo.”

“Love! Love until the night collapses!”

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