Juan Ramon Jimenez Quotes & Sayings

I took off petal after petal, as if you were a rose,
in order to see your soul,
and I didn't see it. — Juan Ramon Jimenez

A permanent state of transition is man's most noble condition. — Juan Ramon Jimenez

Time must have covered it over
with roses so
it would not be remembered.
One particular rose,
that has an unexpected magic,
on top of each lonely hour of gold
or shadows,
a place just right to hold painful memories.
So that among the divine
and joyful
climbing roses, scarlet, white,
which would leave no room for the past,
the soul would be
wound into
the body. — Juan Ramon Jimenez

If they give you ruled paper, write the other way. — Juan Ramon Jimenez

Life. This morning the sun made me adore it. It had, behind the dripping pine trees, the oriental brightness, orange and crimson, of a living being, a rose and an apple, in the physical and ideal fusion of a true and daily paradise. — Juan Ramon Jimenez

To live is nothing more than to come here to die, to be what we were before being born, but with apprenticeship, experience, knowledge of cause, and perhaps with will. — Juan Ramon Jimenez

Dusk falls. There is nothing gentle
about the sky. — Juan Ramon Jimenez

I do not cut my life up into days but my days into lives, each day, each hour, an entire life. — Juan Ramon Jimenez

Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,
and we are standing now, quietly, in the new life? — Juan Ramon Jimenez

Back of my forehead I feel tonight A whole sky full of stars. Under a western moon. Life is indeed lovely! — Juan Ramon Jimenez

If they give you ruled paper, right the other way. — Juan Ramon Jimenez

I unpetalled you, like a rose, to see your soul, and I didn't see it. But everything around -horizons of land and of seas-, everything, out to the infinite, was filled with a fragrance, enormous and alive. — Juan Ramon Jimenez

Every country should realize that its turn at world domination, domination because its rights coincided more or less with the character or progress of the epoch, must terminate with the change brought about by this progress. — Juan Ramon Jimenez

Naked poetry, always mine,
that I have loved my whole life! — Juan Ramon Jimenez

The greatest assassin of life is haste, the desire to reach things before the right time which means overreaching them. — Juan Ramon Jimenez

I am not I.
I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
who remains calm and silent while I talk,
and forgives, gently, when I hate,
who walks where I am not,
who will remain standing when I die. — Juan Ramon Jimenez

Secret memories
not on the road
of our other memories! — Juan Ramon Jimenez

Since the lovely morning
of that day, we were sweethearts. — Juan Ramon Jimenez

Serene last evening,
short as life,
end of all that was loved,
I want to be eternal! — Juan Ramon Jimenez

One must speak in such a way that although someone else, or many others, or an infinite number of people have said it before, it seems as though you said it first. — Juan Ramon Jimenez

Who knows what is going on on the other side of each hour? — Juan Ramon Jimenez

If the poems
please you more than my lips,
I will never give you another kiss. — Juan Ramon Jimenez

Silence which in breaking up at dawn
will speak differently. — Juan Ramon Jimenez

... Perhaps this momentary life of ours is only the light that divides our infinite origin from our infinite end. — Juan Ramon Jimenez

I am fascinated by the dailies, what is daily. — Juan Ramon Jimenez

A fantasy can be equivalent to a paradise and if the fantasy passes, better yet, because eternal paradise would be very boring. — Juan Ramon Jimenez

My only two weapons: time and silence. — Juan Ramon Jimenez

False joy, because you are merely
in time, as they say, and not in the soul! — Juan Ramon Jimenez

Mob of beings and things!
A true sadness, because you are really deep
in the soul, as they say, not in time at all! — Juan Ramon Jimenez

Dynamic ecstasy is absolute romanticism , absolute heroism . And here I return to my point. From my point of view, after the catastrophe which we feel and think is universal, a catastrophe resulting from an excess of useless dynamism of useless progress, of useless realism, of useless technology, after this an unattainable democracy is to be reached through the conception and realization of a new romanticism. — Juan Ramon Jimenez

Some of my affectionate envious friends say, "You write too much." Maybe, I answer. But as long as the best of your little is worse than the worst of my much, I will keep on doing so. — Juan Ramon Jimenez

The background reveals the true being and state of being of the man or thing. If I do not possess the background, I make the man transparent, the thing transparent. — Juan Ramon Jimenez

Love, you are eternal like springtime. — Juan Ramon Jimenez

Literature is a state of culture, poetry is a state of grace, before and after culture. — Juan Ramon Jimenez

Night goes away, a black bull
body heavy with mourning and fear and mystery
it has been bellowing horribly, monstrously,
in genuine fear of all the dead;
and day arrives, a young child
who wants trust, and love, and jokes,
a child who somewhere
far away, in secret places
where what ends meets what is starting,
has been playing a moment
on some meadow or other
of light and darkness
with the bull who is running away ... — Juan Ramon Jimenez

Sharp nostalgia, infinite and terrible, for what I already possess. — Juan Ramon Jimenez

The urban man is an uprooted tree, he can put out leaves, flowers and grow fruit but what a nostalgia his leaf, flower, and fruit will always have for mother earth! — Juan Ramon Jimenez

And life takes place
inside us, with the eternal light
of an ecstatic day
which is going on somewhere else.
It is a beautiful thing,
something true and not yet real, beautiful! — Juan Ramon Jimenez

That day, that day when I can gaze at the sea
both of us calm
and I, trusting, having poured my whole heart into my Life Work ... when death
black waves!
no longer courts me and I can smile, constantly, at everything because, my bones, there will be so little of myself left to give it. — Juan Ramon Jimenez