Pablo Neruda Quotes

Como se reparten el sol en el naranjo las naranjas? How do the oranges divide up sunlight in the orange tree?

The Ardent Hymn that Unites Peoples.

I stalk certain words... I catch them in mid-flight, as they buzz past, I trap them, clean them, peel them, I set myself in front of the dish, they have a crystalline texture to me, vibrant, ivory, vegetable, oily, like fruit, like algae, like agates, like olives... I stir them, I shake them, I drink them, I gulp them down, I mash them, I garnish them... I leave them in my poem like stalactites, like slivers of polished wood, like coals, like pickings from a shipwreck, gifts from the waves... Everything exists in the word.

Your house sounds like a train at midday, the wasps buzz, the saucepans sing, the waterfall enumerates the deeds of the dew . . .

I've come within range of hate. Terrifying, its tremors, its dizzying obsessions. Hate's like a swordfish invisible in the water, knifing suddenly into sight with blood on its blade- clear water misleads you.

Love! Love until the night collapses!

I do not love you-except because I love you; I go from loving to not loving you, from waiting to not waiting for you my heart moves from the cold into the fire.

When your hands leap towards mine, love, what do they bring me in flight?

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

Who hasn't sharpened the edge of his soul? When, just as our eyes are opened, we see hate, and just after learning to walk, we are tripped, and just for wanting to love, we are hated, and for no more than touching, we are hurt, which of us hasn't started to arm himself, to make himself sharp, somehow, like a knife, to pay back the hurt?

We bear the sole, relentless tenderness.

Oh to follow the road that leads away from everything, without anguish, death, winter waiting along it with their eyes open through the dew.

Place gifts of silver in our hands. Give us this day our daily fish.

You are like nobody since I love you.

When did the lemons learn the same creed as the sun?

Between lips and lips there are cities of great ash and moist summit, drops of when and how, vague comings and goings: between lips and lips as along a shore of sand and glass the wind passes.

Girl lithe and tawny, the sun that forms the fruits, that plumps the grains, that curls seaweeds filled your body with joy, and your luminous eyes and your mouth that has the smile of the water. A black yearning sun is braided into the strands of your black mane, when you stretch your arms. You play with the sun as with a little brook and it leaves two dark pools in your eyes.

There is no space wider than that of grief.

We came by night to the Fortunate Isles, And lay like fish Under the net of our kisses.

If you should ask me where I've been all this time I have to say "Things happen." I have to dwell on stones darkening the earth, on the river ruined in its own duration: I know nothing save things the birds have lost, the sea I left behind, or my sister crying. Why this abundance of places? Why does day lock with day? Why the dark night swilling round in our mouths? And why the dead?

Give me your hand out of the depths sown by your sorrows.

You must know that I do not love and that I love you, because everything alive has its two sides; a word is one wing of silence, fire has its cold half. I love you in order to begin to love you, to start infinity again and never to stop loving you: that’s why I do not love you yet. I love you, and I do not love you, as if I held keys in my hand: to a future of joy- a wretched, muddled fate- My love has two lives, in order to love you. -Sonnet XLIV

Conspirators in pajamas who exchange deep kisses for passwords.

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

Hands make the world each day.

I had no more alphabet than the journeying of the swallows, the pure and tiny water of the small, fiery bird that dances rising from the pollen.

Megaphone in which the wind passes singing.

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

Without doubt I praise the wild excellence.

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

Only do not forget, if I wake up crying it's only because in my dream I'm a lost child hunting through the leaves of the night for your hands.

Bitter love, a violet with it's crown of thorns in a thicet of spiky passions, spear of sorrow, corolla of rage: how did you come to conquer my soul? What brought you?

What can I say without touching the earth with my hands?

Let us look for secret things somewhere in the world on the blue shore of silence or where the storm has passed rampaging like a train. There the faint signs are left, coins of time and water, debris ,celestial ash and the irreplaceable rapture of sharing in the labour of soitude in the sand.

Everything is ceremony in the wild garden of childhood.

O merry, merry, merry, like only dogs know how to be happy and nothing more, with an absolute shameless nature.

This time is difficult. Wait for me. We will live it out vividly. Give me your small hand: we will rise and suffer, we will feel, we will rejoice. We are once more the pair who lived in bristling places, in harsh nests in the rock. This time is difficult. Wait for me with a basket, with a shovel, with your shoes and your clothes. Now we need each other, not only for the carnations' sake, not only to look for honey — we need our hands to wash with, to make fire.

When I sleep every night, what am I called or not called? And when I wake, who am I if I was not I while I slept?

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?

And it follows that I am, because you are: it follows from 'you are', that I am, and we: and, because of love, you will, I will, we will, come to be.

Let us forget with generosity those who cannot love us

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.

De pronto no puedo decirte lo que yo te debo decir, hombre,perdóname; sabrás que aunque no escuches mis palabras no me eché a llorar ni a dormir y que contigo estoy sin verte desde hace tiempo y hasta el fin. I can't just suddenly tell you what I should be telling you, friend, forgive me; you know that although you don't hear my words, I wasn't asleep or in tears, that I am with you without seeing you for a good long time and until the end.

Maybe someone will know I didn't weave crowns to draw blood; that I faught against mockery; that I did fill the high tide of my soul with truth. I repaid vileness with doves.

Why do trees conceal the splendor of their roots?

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.

The road made wet by the water of August shines like it was cut in full moonlight

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