Pablo Neruda Quotes

133 Sourced Quotes

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Pablo Neruda
Oh each successive night that comes has something in it of an abandoned ember that is slowly burning out, and it falls swathed in ruins, surrounded by funereal objects.

Pablo Neruda
No one can claim the name of Pedro,
nobody is Rosa or Maria,
all of us are dust or sand,
all of us are rain under rain.
They have spoken to me of Venezuelas,
of Chiles and Paraguays;
I have no idea what they are saying.
I know only the skin of the earth
and I know it has no name.

Pablo Neruda
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?

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

Pablo Neruda
Don't you know there is no one in the streets
and no one in the houses?

There are only eyes in the windows.
If you don't have a place to sleep,
knock on a door and it will open,
open up to a certain point
and you will see that it is cold inside,
and that that house is empty
and wants nothing to do with you,
your stories mean nothing,
and if you insist on being gentle,
the dog and the cat will bite you.

Pablo Neruda
Once more I am the silent one who came out of the distance wrapped in cold rain and bells: I owe to earth's pure death the will to sprout.

Pablo Neruda
Like a jar you housed the infinite tenderness, and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.

Pablo Neruda
Pale blind diver, luckless slinger, lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

Pablo Neruda
Anyone who doesn't read Cortázar is doomed. Not to read him is a grave invisible disease which in time can have terrible consequences. Something similar to a man who had never tasted peaches. He would be quietly getting sadder, noticeably paler, and probably little by little, he would lose his hair.

Pablo Neruda
Wakening from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance climbed up through my conscious mind as if suddenly the roots I had left behind cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood - and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent.

Pablo Neruda
Poetry is a deep inner calling in man; from it came liturgy, the psalms, and also the content of religions.

Pablo Neruda
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.

Pablo Neruda
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.

Pablo Neruda
I have gone marking the blank atlas of your body
with crosses of fire.
My mouth went across: a spider, trying to hide.
In you, behind you, timid, driven by thirst.

Pablo Neruda
There is something from every living being in the atmosphere: close inspection of the air would disclose beggars, lawyers bandits, mailmen, seamstresses and a little of each occupation, a humbled remnant wants to perform its own work within us.

Pablo Neruda
From scarlet to powdered gold, to blazing yellow, to the rare ashen emerald, to the orange and black velvet of your shimmering corselet, out to the tip that like an amber thorn begins you, small, superlative being, you are a miracle, and you blaze

Pablo Neruda
I am alone with rickety materials,
the rain falls on me, and it is like me,
it is like me in its raving, alone in the dead world,
repulsed as it falls, and with no persistent form.

Pablo Neruda
Tell me, is the rose naked or is that her only dress? Why do trees conceal the splendor of their roots? Who hears the regrets of the thieving automobile? Is there anything in the world sadder than a train standing in the rain?

Pablo Neruda
I can live only in my own country. I cannot live without having my feet and my hands on it and my ear against it, without feeling the movement of its waters and its shadows, without feeling my roots reach down into its soil for maternal nourishment.

Pablo Neruda