Pedro Calderon de la Barca Quotes

Tis not where we lie but whence we fell; the loss of Heaven's the greatest pain in Hell.

Green is the prime color of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises.

All must yield to the weight of years; conquest is not difficult for time.

Grief has been compared to a hydra; for every one that dies, two are born.

In this treacherous world Nothing is the truth nor a lie. Everything depends on the color Of the crystal through which one sees it

A friar who asks alms for God's sake begs for two.

Dreams are rough copies of the waking soul Yet uncorrected of the higher will, So that men sometimes in their dreams confess An unsuspected, or forgotten, self; -Since Dreaming, Madness, Passion, are akin In missing each that salutory rein Of reason, and the grinding will of man.

For man's greatest crime is to have been born.

If a pretty woman only knew how anger improved her beauty! Her complexion needs no other paint than indignation.

These flowers, which were splendid and sprightly, waking in the dawn of the morning, in the evening will be a pitiful frivolity, sleeping in the cold night's arms.

The dower of great beauty has always been misfortune, since happiness and beauty do not agree together.

Even in dreams doing good is not wasted.

No windows give a better view than those a man brings with him in his head, not asking for tickets of admission, since at all functions, festivals, or feasts he looks out with the same nice self-composure.

What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story. And the greatest good is little enough: for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.

How surely a knowledge of the world hardens the heart!

One may know how to gain a victory, and know not how to use it.

A good action is never lost; it is a treasure laid up and guarded for the doer's need.

All just laws condemn cruelty.

At the point when affection is not frenzy, it is not adore.

And yet, and yet, in these our ghostly lives, Half night, half day, half sleeping, half awake, How if our waking life, like that of sleep, Be all a dream in that eternal life To which we wake not till we sleep in death

What law, what reason can deny that gift so sweet, so natural that God has given a stream, a fish, a beast, a bird?

Restless sunflower; cease to move.

The fox is very cunning, but he is more cunning who catches the fox.

Great events have sent before them their announcements.

The heart is an astrologer that always divines the truth.

When love is not madness, it is not love.

Speak no evil of women; I tell thee the meanest of them deserves respect; for of women do we not all come?

Our treasures trifles seem, and all our life is dreaming, and the dreams themselves are dreams.

No virtue can be real that has not been tried. The gold in the crucible alone is perfect; the loadstone tests the steel, and the diamond is tried by the diamond, while metals gleam the brighter in the furnace.