Giorgos Seferis Quotes

12 Sourced Quotes

As pines
keep the shape of the wind even when the wind has fled and is no longer there, so words
guard the shape of man
even when man has fled and is no longer there.

Giorgos Seferis

Great suffering descended on Greece.
So many bodies thrown
into the jaws of the sea, the jaws of the earth... all for a linen undulation, a bit of cloud, a butterfly's flicker, a swan's down, an empty tunic —all for a Helen.

Giorgos Seferis

When, on the road to Thebes, Oedipus met the Sphinx, who asked him her riddle, his answer was: Man. This simple word destroyed the monster. We have many monsters to destroy. Let us think of Oedipus' answer.

Giorgos Seferis

Sometimes it crosses my mind that the things I write here are nothing other than images that prisoners or sailors tattoo on their skin.

Giorgos Seferis

He grew old between the fires of Troy and the quarries of Sicily.

Giorgos Seferis

They were lovely, your eyes, but you didn't know where to look.

Giorgos Seferis

Each of us earns his death, his own death, which belongs to no one else and this game is life.

Giorgos Seferis

Three years
we waited intently for the herald closely watching
the pines the shore and the stars.

Giorgos Seferis

We have no rivers, we have no wells, we have no springs, only a few cisterns — and these empty—that echo, and we worship them. A stagnant hollow sound, the same as our loneliness the same as our love, the same as our bodies.

Giorgos Seferis

We were searching to rediscover the first seed so that the ancient drama could begin again.

Giorgos Seferis

Here where one meets the path of rain, wind, and ruin does there exist the movement of the face, shape of the tenderness of those who've shrunk so strangely in our lives, those who remained the shadow of waves and thoughts with the sea's boundlessness or perhaps no, nothing is left but the weight the nostalgia for the weight of a living existence... the poet a void.

Giorgos Seferis

They're a burden for us
the friends who no longer know how to die.

Giorgos Seferis

Giorgos Seferis

Giorgos Seferis

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Born: March 13, 1900

Died: September 20, 1971 (aged 71)

Bio: Giorgos or George Seferis, the pen name of Georgios Seferiades, was a Greek poet-diplomat. He was one of the most important Greek poets of the 20th century, and a Nobel laureate.

Known for:

Collected poems, 1924-1955 (1967)
Six Nights on the Acropolis
A Levant Journal
A Poet's Journal
On the Greek style (1966)

Giorgos Seferis on Wikipedia

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