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Quotes from Collected Poems — Constantine P. Cavafy

1863–1933 Greece

← All quotes by Constantine P. Cavafy

35 quotes

Don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive — don’t mourn them uselessly.

Collected Poems (1992)

Later, in a more perfect society,
someone else made just like me
is certain to appear and act freely.

Collected Poems (1992)

The empire is delivered at last.
The vile, the appalling Julian
reigns no longer.

Collected Poems (1992)

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

Collected Poems (1992)

And in Spain Galba
secretly musters and drills his army —
Galba, the old man in his seventy-third year.

Collected Poems (1992)

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.

Collected Poems (1992)

Honor to those who in the life they lead
define and guard a Thermopylae.

Collected Poems (1992)

Of what’s to come the wise perceive
things about to happen.

Collected Poems (1992)

Its councils are full of Legislators
no charlatan can fool.

Collected Poems (1992)

The greatest gods of our glorious Greece
appeared before you.
And if they left, don’t think for a minute
that they were frightened by a gesture.

Collected Poems (1992)

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.

Collected Poems (1992)

He who hopes to grow in spirit
will have to transcend obedience and respect.
He'll hold to some laws
but he'll mostly violate
both law and custom, and go beyond
the established, inadequate norm.

Collected Poems (1992)

Just to be on the first step
should make you happy and proud.
To have come this far is no small achievement:
what you have done is a glorious thing.

Collected Poems (1992)

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.

Collected Poems (1992)

He remembers impulses bridled, the joy
he sacrificed. Every chance he lost
now mocks his senseless caution.

Collected Poems (1992)

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

Collected Poems (1992)

When they saw Patroklos dead
— so brave and strong, so young —
the horses of Achilles began to weep;
their immortal nature was upset deeply
by this work of death they had to look at.

Collected Poems (1992)

Now the longed-for signal has appeared. Yet when happiness comes
it brings less joy than one expected.
But at least we've gained this much: we've rid ourselves
of hope and expectation.

Collected Poems (1992)

From my most unnoticed actions,
my most veiled writing —
from these alone will I be understood.

Collected Poems (1992)

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.

Collected Poems (1992)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Constantine P. Cavafy (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.