Cavafy Quotes & Sayings

You will always end up in this city. Don't hope for things elsewhere:
there is no ship for you, there is no road.
As you've wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you've destroyed it everywhere else in the world — Constantine P. Cavafy

And from this marvellous pan-Hellenic expedition, triumphant, brilliant in every way, celebrated on all sides, glorified incomparable, we emerged: the great new Hellenic world. — C.P. Cavafy

If you cannot fashion your life as you would like,
endeavour to do this at least,
as much as you can: do not trivialize it
through too much contact with the world,
through too much activity and chatter.
Do not trivialize your life by parading it,
running around and displaying it
in the daily stupidity
of cliques and gatherings
until it becomes like a tiresome guest.
("As Much As You Can") — Constantine P. Cavafy

In these dark rooms I pass
such listless days, I wander up and down
looking for the windows - when a window opens
there will be some relief.
But there are no windows, or at least
I cannot find them. And perhaps it's just as well.
Perhaps the light would prove another torment.
Who knows what new things it would reveal?
("The Windows") — Constantine P. Cavafy

I'll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart -like something dead- lies buried.
How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I've spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.
You won't find a new country, won't find another shore.
This city will always pursue you.
You'll walk the same streets, grow old
in the same neighbourhoods, turn grey in these same houses.
You'll always end up in this city. Don't hope for things elsewhere:
there's no ship for you, there's no road.
Now that you've wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you've destroyed it everywhere in the world. — Constantine P. Cavafy

When you set sail for Ithaca,
wish for the road to be long,
full of adventures, full of knowledge. — Constantine P. Cavafy

Body, remember not only how much you were loved, not only the beds you lay on, but also those desires glowing openly in eyes that looked at you, trembling for you in voices. — C.P. Cavafy

Give me artificial flowers - porcelain and metal glories - neither fading nor decaying, forms unaging. Flowers of the splendid gardens of another place, where Forms and Styles and Knowledge dwell. I love flowers made of glass or gold, true Art's true gifts, their painted hues more beautiful than nature's, worked in nacre and enamel, with perfect leaves and branches. — C.P. Cavafy

Great writers, I discovered, were not to be bowed down before and worshipped, but embraced and befriended. Their names resounded through history not because they had massive brows and thought deep incomprehensible thoughts, but because they opened windows in the mind, they put their arms round you and showed you things you always knew but never dared to believe. Even if their names were terrifyingly foreign and intellectual sounding, Dostoevsky, Baudelaire or Cavafy, they turned out to be charming and wonderful and quite unalarming after all. — Stephen Fry

To certain people there comes a day when they must say the great Yes or the great No ... — Constantine P. Cavafy

When you set out on you journey to Ithaka, pray that the road is long, full of adventure, full of knowledge. — Constantine P. Cavafy

As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who were given this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with the whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen - your final delectation - to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing. — Constantine P. Cavafy

You said, "I will go to another land, I will go to another sea.
Another city will be found, better than this.
Every effort of mine is condemned by fate;
and my heart is-like a corpse-buried.
How long in this wasteland will my mind remain.
Wherever I turn my eyes, wherever I may look
I see the black ruins of my life here,
where I spent so many years, and ruined and wasted."
New lands you will not find, you will not find other seas.
The city will follow you. You will roam the same
streets. And you will age in the same neighborhoods;
in these same houses you will grow gray.
Always you will arrive in this city. To another land-do not hope-
there is no ship for you, there is no road.
As you have ruined your life here
in this little corner, you have destroyed it in the whole world.2 — Constantine P. Cavafy

Hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery. — Constantine P. Cavafy

Distinguishing Marks
Every land has its distinguishing mark.
Particular to Thessaly are horsemanship and horses;
what marks a Spartan
is war's season; Media has
its tables with their dishes;
hair marks the Celts, the Assyrians have beards.
But the marks that distinguish
Athens are Mankind and the Word. — Constantine P. Cavafy

I have gazed so much on beauty
that my eyes overflow with it. — Constantine P. Cavafy

From all I did and all I said let no one try to find out who I was. — C.P. Cavafy

When setting out upon your way to Ithaca,
wish always that your course be long,
full of adventure, full of lore. — Constantine P. Cavafy

That we've broken their statues, that we've driven them out of their temples, doesn't mean at all that the gods are dead. O land of Ionia, they're still in love with you, their souls still keep your memory. — C.P. Cavafy

As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon - don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon - you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you. — Constantine P. Cavafy

Here, listen to this; a poem by a Greek who lived in Alexandria, one Cavafy: "You said, 'I shall go to another land to another sea Another city will be found better than this. My every effort is a written indictment And my heart - like the dead - is buried. How long will my mind be in this decay,' "and so on like that, it's the same old song we know so well - if only I were somewhere else, I would be happy. Until the poet replies to his poor friend, "New lands you will not find, you won't find other seas. The city will follow you. The streets you roam will be the same. There is no boat for you, there is no street. In the same way your life you destroyed here In this petty corner, you have spoiled it in the entire universe. — Kim Stanley Robinson

Nero wasn't worried at all when he heard the utterance of the Delphic Oracle: "Beware the age of seventy-three." Plenty of time to enjoy himself still. He's thirty. The deadline the god has given him is quite enough to cope with future dangers. — C.P. Cavafy

On hearing about powerful love, respond, be moved like an aesthete. Only, fortunate as you've been, remember how much your imagination created for you. — C.P. Cavafy

Days to come stand in front of us
like a row of lighted candles
golden, warm, and vivid candles.
Days gone by fall behind us,
a gloomy line of snuffed-out candles;
the nearest are smoking still,
cold, melted, and bent.
I don't want to look at them: their shape saddens me,
and it saddens me to remember their original light.
I look ahead at my lighted candles.
I don't want to turn for fear of seeing, terrified,
how quickly that dark line gets longer,
how quickly the snuffed-out candles proliferate. — Constantine P. Cavafy

Don't mourn your luck that's failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive - don't mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don't fool yourself, don't say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don't degrade yourself with empty hopes like these. — Constantine P. Cavafy

Anyway, those things would not have lasted long.
The experience of the years shows it to me.
But Destiny arrived in some haste and stopped them.
The beautiful life was brief.
But how potent were the perfumes,
On how splendid a bed we lay,
To what sensual delight we gave our bodies.
An echo of the days of pleasure,
An echo of the days drew near me,
A little of the fire of the youth of both of us,
Again I took in my hands a letter,
And I read and reread till the light was gone.
And melancholy, I came out on the balcony
Came out to change my thoughts at least by looking at
A little of the city that I loved,
A little movement on the street and in the shops.
Translated by Rae Dalven — Constantine P. Cavafy

Roses by the head, jasmine at the feet so appear the longings that have passed without being satisfied, not one of them granted a night of sensual pleasure, or one of its radiant mornings. — C.P. Cavafy

Of what's to come the wise perceive things about to happen. Sometimes during moments of intense study their hearing's troubled: the hidden sound of things approaching reaches them, and they listen reverently, while in the street outside the people hear nothing whatsoever. — C.P. Cavafy

The days of the future stand in front of us Like a line of candles all alight Golden and warm and lively little candles. — C.P. Cavafy

He said he'd hurt himself against a wall or had fallen down.
But there was probably some other reason for the wounded, the bandaged shoulder.
With a rather abrupt gesture, reaching for a shelf to bring down some photographs he wanted to look at, the bandage came came undone and a little blood ran.
I did it up again, taking my time over the binding; he wasn't in pain and I liked looking at the blood. It was a thing of my love, that blood.
When he left, I found, in front of his chair, a bloody rag, part of the dressing, a rag to be thrown straight into the garbage; and I put it to my lips and kept it there a long while- the blood of love against my lips. — Constantine P. Cavafy

And now, what will become of us without the barbarians? Those people were a kind of solution. — Constantine P. Cavafy

And now, what's going to happen to us without barbarians?
They were, those people, a kind of solution. — Constantine P. Cavafy

Speak not of guilt, speak not of responsibility. When the Regiment of the Senses parades by, with music, and with banners; when the senses shiver and shudder, it is only a fool and and an irreverent person that will keep his distance, who will not embrace the good cause, marching towards the conquest of pleasures and passions. All of morality's laws - poorly understood and applied - are nil and cannot stand even for a moment, when the Regiment of the Senses parades by, with music, and with banners. — C.P. Cavafy

And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you. Wise as you have become, with so much experience, you must already have understood what these Ithacas mean. — Constantine P. Cavafy

Without compunction, pity or shame,
they've built towering walls around me.
Desperate, I sit and think one thing:
alone here this fate confounds me.
For there were many things I'd hoped to do out there.
With all the construction, how was I not aware?
Yet the crack and clang of hammers I never once heard.
Imperceptibly they've confined me from the outside world.
("Walls") — Constantine P. Cavafy

Try to keep them, poet, those erotic visions of yours, however few of them there are that can be stilled. Put them, half-hidden, in your lines. — C.P. Cavafy

The frivolous can call me frivolous. I've always been most punctilious about important things. And I insist that no one knows better than I do the Holy Fathers, or the Scriptures, or the Canons of the Councils. — C.P. Cavafy

One candle is enough. Its gentle light will be more suitable, will be more gracious when the Shades arrive, the Shades of Love. — C.P. Cavafy

Return often and take me, beloved sensation, return and take me - When memory of the body awakens, and old desire again runs through the blood; when the lips and skin remember, and the hands feel as if they touch again. — C.P. Cavafy

Guard, O my soul, against pomp and glory. And if you cannot curb your ambitions, at least pursue them hesitantly, cautiously. And the higher you go, the more searching and careful you need to be. — C.P. Cavafy

When you set out for Ithaca, ask that your way be long — C.P. Cavafy

The holy Cross goes forward; it brings joy and consolation to every quarter where Christians live; and these God-fearing people, elated, stand in their doorways and greet it reverently, the strength, the salvation of the universe, the Cross. — C.P. Cavafy

It is one of the talents of great stylists to make obsolete words cease from appearing obsolete through the way in which they introduce them in their writing. Obsolete words which under the pens of others would seem stilted or out of place, occur most naturally under theirs. This is owing to the tact & judgment of the writers who know when
& when only - the disused term can be introduced, when it is artistically agreeable or linguistically necessary; & of course then the obsolete word becomes obsolete only in name. It is recalled into existence by the natural requirements of a powerful or subtle style. It is not a corpse disinterred (as with less skillful writers) but a beautiful body awaked from a long & refreshing sleep. — Constantine P. Cavafy

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum? The barbarians are due here today. — C.P. Cavafy

If you are one of the truly elect, be careful how you attain your eminence. — C.P. Cavafy

A month passes by and brings another month. Easy to guess what lies ahead: all of yesterday's boredom. And tomorrow ends up no longer like tomorrow. — C.P. Cavafy

Arriving there is what you are destined for — C.P. Cavafy

He came to read; two or three books
are lying open: history and poetry.
But after just ten minutes of reading
he lets them drop. There on the sofa
he falls asleep. He truly is devoted to reading-
but he is twenty-three years old, and very handsome.
And just this afternoon, Eros surged
within his perfect limbs and on his lips.
Into his beautiful flesh came the heat of passion,
and there was no foolish embarrassment
about the form that pleasure took.. — C.P. Cavafy

The days of the future stand in fornt of us
Like a line of candles all alight
Golden and warm and lively little candles
The days that are past are left behind — Constantine P. Cavafy

Before Jerusalem
Now they've come before Jerusalem.
Passions, avarice, and ambition,
as well as their chivalrous pride
have swiftly slipped from their souls.
Now they've come before Jerusalem.
In their ecstasy and their devoutness
they've forgotten their quarrels with the Greeks;
they've forgotten their hatred of the Turks.
Now they've come before Jerusalem.
And the Crusaders, so daring and invincible, so vehement in their every march and onslaught,
are fearful and nervous and are unable
to go further; they tremble like small children,
and like small children weep, all weep,
as they behold the walls of Jerusalem. — Constantine P. Cavafy

He wasn't completely wrong, poor old Gemistus (let Lord Andronicus and the patriarch suspect him if they like), in wanting us, telling us to become pagan once again. — C.P. Cavafy

I'm practically broke and homeless. This fatal city, Antioch, has devoured all my money: this fatal city with its extravagant life. — C.P. Cavafy

And if you can't shape your life the way you want, at least try as much as you can not to degrade it ... — Constantine P. Cavafy

Have Ithaka always in your mind.
Your arrival there is what you are destined for.
But don't in the least hurry the journey. — Constantine P. Cavafy