Pedro Calderón de la Barca Quotes
1600–1681 Spain
Pedro Calderón de la Barca (January 17, 1600 – May 25, 1681) was a Spanish dramatist and poet.
Also known as: Calderón de la Barca, Pedro, De la Barca, Pedro Calderón
Random Pedro Calderón de la Barca quote
66 quotes
Flattering, free, ungrateful, glides sweet and smooth a fountain with peaceful waters and crystal waves; flattering, for it uttereth sound enough, and does not feel; soft, because it feigneth; free, for loud it runs; sweet, because it murmureth; and ungrateful, for it flies.
What law, what reason can deny
That gift so sweet, so natural, that God
Has giv'n a stream, a fish, a beast, a bird?
To be cruel is condemned by every law.
Life is but to live with honour.
What is this life? A frenzy, an illusion,
A shadow, a delirium, a fiction.
The greatest good's but little, and this life
Is but a dream, and dreams are only dreams.
What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story. And the greatest good is little enough: for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.
O thou fair and beauteous garden, whose green republic is the chosen clime of April; for it alone knows April, and makes it the god of its spring-time — it the king of its twelve months.
La verde es color primera
Del mundo, y en quien consiste
Su hermosura.
Green is the prime colour of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises.
So august is the divinity of monarchs, so strong and absolute, that it must ever engender pitying mind, and force noble blood to display pity and wisdom.
These flowers, which were splendid and sprightly,
Waking in the dawn of the morning,
In the evening will be a pitiful frivolity,
Sleeping in the cold night's arms.
Que como es rayo el poder,
Hiere aun antes del aviso.
To-day love shows his vengeful power, making us proudly to understand that his arrows can fall from his hand like heaven's bolts; for, like the lightning passing wildly by, he wounds the proud and lays low the high.
Ah, my Zelima, if I did but know what I feel, that certain knowledge would be a cure of my grief; but I know not the nature of my pain, for now it seemeth tearful sadness, and now it is pensive melancholy; I only know, I know I feel, though I know not what I feel, the illusions of my soul mock me so.
It is not a prudent act to inform the firmest lover that there is one that loves him well; for the humblest heart has so much vanity, that what it once thought to be a favour soon becomes a thankless debt.
Since no virtue can be real that has not been tried. The gold in the crucible alone is perfect; the loadstone tests the steel, and the diamond is tried by the diamond, while metals gleam the brighter in the furnace.
For as on the canvas subtle pencils blend dark and bright in such proportions, that in dim perspective now appear mountains, now famous cities, for remoteness ever forms monstrous shapes; thus athwart the fields of azure lights and shades alternate fly, intermingling sea and sky with clouds and the waves, mocking the sight with a thousand delusions.
Absence is the death of love.
See you not this rock suspended, so that it appears with difficulty kept up? and still it hangs as it has hung for unnumbered ages; for it is a gag which checks and interferes with the breath that escapes from the cave, wherewith the melancholy mountain yawns.
One morning, at the hour when the half-awakened sun, trampling down the lingering shadows of the west, spreads his ruby-tinted tresses over jessamines and roses, drying with cloths of gold Aurora's tears of mingled fire and snow, which the snow's rays converted into pearls.
But think that this hard sentence may be given us as a favour by Heaven; fortune will change it for the better; for prudence knows how to subdue misfortune, however heavy. Bear with patience whatever sorrow time or fortune brings upon you — that barbarous fickle deity — now a corpse, now a flower, ever changing, and thus it may change our lot.