Eugenio Quotes & Sayings

The poet does not know - often he will never know - whom he really writes for. — Eugenio Montale

But poets were not considered dangerous and they were advised to exercise self-censorship. At most, poets were requested not to write at all. I took advantage of this negative liberty. — Eugenio Montale

Nearly all human beings love, but nearly none know how to love. — Eugenio Maria De Hostos

In reality art is always for everyone and for no one. — Eugenio Montale

No writer in our time has been more isolated than Kafka, and yet few have achieved communication as well as he did. — Eugenio Montale

There is poetry even in prose, in all the great prose which is not merely utilitarian or didactic: there exist poets who write in prose or at least in more or less apparent prose; millions of poets write verses which have no connection with poetry. — Eugenio Montale

Eugenio Montale - born in Genoa in 1896, died in Milan, 1981 - is one of the twentieth-century Europeans who has spoken most meaningfully to American and British poets. — Jonathan Galassi

Art is the production of objects for consumption, to be used and discarded while waiting for a new world in which man will have succeeded in freeing himself of everything, even of his own consciousness. — Eugenio Montale

We've worn our words to death,
when now I say: my love,
nothing happens, absolutely nothing.
And yet, before the words were spent,
I'm certain
that everything trembled
at the mere murmur of your name
in the silence of my heart.
Now we have nothing to give.
There is nothing within you
that asks me for water.
The past is useless as a rag.
And I've told you already: the words are spent.
Good-bye. — Eugenio De Andrade

Lend your light to the blind. Why should the wickedness of men irritate you, when it is only blindness? — Eugenio Maria De Hostos

Good God! I'm out of tobacco. — Eugenio Prados

When I walk down the street, even here in the U.S., they are always saying my catchphrases of my characters, and they shout at me with my catchphrases. — Eugenio Derbez

The real history, the one that counts and is not to be found in books, is precisely this one, the one made by simple men; and it is the only one that rules the world. — Eugenio Montale

Holidays - Have no pity. — Eugenio Montale

Pantelion and Televisa can reach my core fan base better than anyone, and with the distribution expertise and brand recognition of Lionsgate, I know we can build on the crossover audience that we began to reach with 'Instructions.' — Eugenio Derbez

I went down, giving you my arm, at least one million of stairs
and now that you are no more here it's the void on every step.
Also in such way our long journey has been short too.
Mine still goes on, and I need no more
coincidences, reservations,
traps, shames of those who think
that reality is that what you see.
I went down millions of stairs giving you my arm
not just because it's better to see with four eyes than two.
With you I went down because I knew that between us
the only true pupils, though so much darkened,
were yours — Eugenio Montale

The most dangerous aspect of present-day life is the dissolution of the feeling of individual responsibility. Mass solitude has done away with any difference between the internal and the external, between the intellectual and the physical. — Eugenio Montale

Perhaps One Morning Walking
(Forse un mattino andando in un'aria di vetro)
Perhaps one morning walking in dry glassy air,
I will turn, I will see the miracle complete:
nothingness at my shoulder, the void behind
me, with a drunkard's terror.
Then, as on a screen, trees houses hills
will advance swiftly in familiar illusion,
But it will be too late; and I will return, silently,
to men who do not look back, with my secret. — Eugenio Montale

Your speech so halting and unguarded
is the only thing left
with which to content myself.
But the accent is changed, the colour is different. — Eugenio Montale

In the shadows he could just make out a rough, ghostly wall that stood out in the pitch darkness. As if drawn by an irresistible black beacon, he slowly advanced step by step towards that incandescent wall of shale. Far off, the city was vanishing into the air. The fiesta disappeared somewhere beyond his eyelids. The wall was increasing in size, growing amidst a mixture of shadows and sparks. It was a wall of smoke from which sprouted candles that resembled asteroids. In fact, it was not one wall but two. Two tall, crackling walls, silently burning. But it wasn't two walls either. It was, in fact, a street. — Eugenio Fernandez Granell

I do not go in search of poetry. I wait for poetry to visit me. — Eugenio Montale

I am perhaps a late follower of Zoroaster and I believe that the foundation of life is built upon the struggle between the two opposing forces of Good and Evil. — Eugenio Montale

Ideas are born, they struggle, triumph, change, and they are transformed; but is there a dead idea which in the end does not live on, transformed into a broader and clearer goal? — Eugenio Maria De Hostos

Poetry is the art which is technically within the grasp of everyone: a piece of paper and a pencil and one is ready. — Eugenio Montale

Happiness, for you we walk on a knife edge. To the eyes you are a flickering light, to the feet, thin ice that cracks; and so may no one touch you who loves you. — Eugenio Montale

Oh! The vile indignity of the human condition! Oh! The undeserving condition of the human cowardice! Go and inquire the grass and the trees. They from themselves produce flowers, leaves and fruits; you from yourself, you produce nits, lice, and worms. They from themselves produce oil, wine, and balm; you from yourself send out mucous, urine, and dung. They from themselves send out the fragrance of sweetness; and you make of yourself an abomination of stench!"
Lothar of Segni, future Innocent III
quoted by Eugenio Garin in his History of Italian Philosophy — Innocent III

I have been judged to be a pessimist but what abyss of ignorance and low egoism is not hidden in one who thinks that Man is the god of himself and that his future can only be triumphant? — Eugenio Montale

By educating women to use all their brains, men will not only be just, but will also ensure the future of a new social order in which women will apply their intelligence and warm feelings to the problems of living. Men are fools to entrust the upbringing of their sons, whom they expect to grow up to love freedom, to women who have never known freedom themselves. — Eugenio Maria De Hostos

For my part, if I consider poetry as an object, I maintain that it is born of the necessity of adding a vocal sound (speech) to the hammering of the first tribal music. — Eugenio Montale

When you cannot be just through virtue, be so through pride. — Eugenio Maria De Hostos

Against the dark background of this contemporary civilization of well-being, even the arts tend to mingle, to lose their identity. — Eugenio Montale

Man cannot produce a single work without the assistance of the slow, assiduous, corrosive worm of thought. — Eugenio Montale

It has often been observed that the repercussion of poetic language on prose language can be considered a decisive cut of a whip. — Eugenio Montale

This proves that great lyric poetry can die, be reborn, die again, but will always remain one of the most outstanding creations of the human soul. — Eugenio Montale

There are complete men and incomplete men. If you would be a complete man, put all of your soul's strength into all of your life's actions. — Eugenio Maria De Hostos

Slavery has as many shapes among us as there are things we need. — Eugenio Maria De Hostos

Absent one, how I miss you on this shore
that conjures you and fades if you're away — Eugenio Montale

'Instructions Not Included' is proving that there is a huge Latin market that needs a special project. They love seeing their own people; they want to see themselves onscreen. In my case, I know them pretty well. I know what they laugh at. I think it's going to open a lot of doors, this movie. — Eugenio Derbez

The earth turned to bring us closer,
it spun on itself and within us,
and finally joined us together in this dream
as written in the Symposium.
Nights passed by, snowfalls and solstices;
time passed in minutes and millennia.
An ox cart that was on its way to Nineveh
arrived in Nebraska.
A rooster was singing some distance from the world,
in one of the thousand pre-lives of our fathers.
The earth was spinning with its music carrying us on board;
it didn't stop turning a single moment
as if so much love, so much that's miraculous
was only an adagio written long ago
in the Symposium's score. — Eugenio Montejo

Narrative art, the novel, from Murasaki to Proust, has produced great works of poetry. — Eugenio Montale

The new man is born too old to tolerate the new world. The present conditions of life have not yet erased the traces of the past. We run too fast, but we still do not move enough. He looks but he does not contemplate, he sees but he does not think. He runs away from time, which is made of thought, and yet all he can feel is his own time, the present. — Eugenio Montale

However, poetry does not live solely in books or in school anthologies. — Eugenio Montale

Evidently the arts, all the visual arts, are becoming more democratic in the worst sense of the word. — Eugenio Montale

Slowly poetry becomes visual because it paints images, but it is also musical: it unites two arts into one. — Eugenio Montale

If you wish to know what justice is, let injustice pursue you. — Eugenio Maria De Hostos

Many of today's verses are prose and bad prose. — Eugenio Montale

True poetry is similar to certain pictures whose owner is unknown and which only a few initiated people know. — Eugenio Montale

I have always knocked at the door of that wonderful and terrible enigma which is life. — Eugenio Montale

Strangely, Dante's Divine Comedy did not produce a prose of that creative height or it did so after centuries. — Eugenio Montale

For me, self-discipline has never corresponded to a voluntary adhesion to norms invented by others. It has always been the first step towards breaking the chains. — Eugenio Barba

Too many lives are needed to make just one. — Eugenio Montale

Mass communication, radio, and especially television, have attempted, not without success, to annihilate every possibility of solitude and reflection. — Eugenio Montale

It's urgent-love.
It's urgent- a boat upon the sea.
It's urgent to destroy certain words,
hate, solitude, and cruelty,
some mornings,
many swords.
It's urgent to invent a joyfulness,
multiply kisses and cornfields,
discover roses and rivers
and glistening mornings- it's urgent.
Silence and an impure light fall upon our shoulders till they ache.
It's urgent- love, it's urgent
to endure. — Eugenio De Andrade

There is also poetry written to be shouted in a square in front of an enthusiastic crowd. This occurs especially in countries where authoritarian regimes are in power. — Eugenio Montale

Today not even a universal fire could make the torrential poetic production of our time disappear. But it is exactly a question of production, that is, of hand-made products which are subject to the laws of taste and fashion. — Eugenio Montale

All men are good when free from passion, interest, or error. — Eugenio Maria De Hostos