Top 290 Quotes & Sayings by Pablo Neruda

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

Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

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

But from each crime are born bullets that will one day seek out in you where the heart lies.

A child who does not play is not a child, but the man who doesn't play has lost forever the child who lived in him and who he will miss terribly.

I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests.

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

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

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.

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

What did the earth teach the trees? How to speak to the sky.

If each day falls inside each night, there exists a well where clarity is imprisoned. We need to sit on the rim of the well of darkness and fish for fallen light with patience.

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

We must dream our way.

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

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

Every day you play with the light of the universe.

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.

You can crush the flowers, but you can't stop the spring.

Everything is so alive, that I can be alive. Without moving I can see it all. In your life I see everything that lives.

In you is the illusion of each day. You arrive like the dew to the cupped flowers. You undermine the horizon with your absence. Eternally in flight like the wave.

Let us forget with generosity those who cannot love us

Hour of nostalgia, hour of happiness, hour of solitude.

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.

Perhaps the earth can teach us As when everything seems dead And later proves to be alive

All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are.

I love you between shadow and soul. I love you as the plant that hasn't bloomed yet, and carries hidden within itself the light of flowers. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. Because of you, the dense fragrance that rises from the earth lives in my body, rioting with hunger for the eternity of our victorious kisses.

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.

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

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.

In one kiss, you'll know all I haven't said.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: 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, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.

You are like night, calmed, constellated. Your silence is star-like, as distant, as true.

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

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

Under your skin the moon is alive.

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.

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.

Never an illness, nor the absence of grandeur, no, nothing is able to kill the best in us, that kindness, dear sir, we are afflicted with: beautiful is the flower of man, his conduct, and every door opens on the beautiful truth and never hides treacherous whispers. I always gained something from making myself better, better than I am, better than I was, that most subtle citation: to recover some lost petal of the sadness I inherited: to search once more for the light that sings inside of me, the unwavering light.

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

To feel the affection that comes from those whom we do not know ... widens out the boundaries of our being, and unites all living things.

Laughter is the language of the soul.

I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz or arrow of carnations that propagate fire: I love you as certain dark things are loved, secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

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.

Love is not about property, diamonds and gifts. It is about sharing your very self with the world around you.

Take it all back. Life is boring, except for flowers, sunshine, your perfect legs. A glass of cold water when you are really thirsty. The way bodies fit together. Fresh and young and sweet. Coffee in the morning. These are just moments. I struggle with the in-betweens. I just want to never stop loving like there is nothing else to do, because what else is there to do?

There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song - but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny.

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.

Then love knew it was called love. And when I lifted my eyes to your name, suddenly your heart showed me my way

I love all the things there are, and of all fires love is the only inexhaustible one; and that's why I go from life to life.

Only a burning patience will lead to the attainment of a splendid happiness.

There is no space wider than that of grief.

We are dust and to dust return. In the end we're neither air, nor fire, nor water, just dirt, neither more nor less, just dirt, and maybe some yellow flowers.

And when you appear all the rivers sound in my body, bells shake the sky, and a hymn fills the world.

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.

There were thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit. There were grief and the ruins, and you were the miracle.

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

Of everything I have seen, it's you I want to go on seeing: of everything I've touched, it's your flesh I want to go on touching. I love your orange laughter. I am moved by the sight of you sleeping. What am I to do, love, loved one? I don't know how others love or how people loved in the past. I live, watching you, loving you. Being in love is my nature.

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

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.