Top 15 Pablo Neruda Quotes

Chilean poet and politician (1904-1973)

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Pablo Neruda (born Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto; 12 July 1904 – 23 September 1973) was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. Neruda became known as a poet when he was 13 years old, and wrote in a variety of styles, including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and passionate love poems such as the ones in his collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924).

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Alternative Names: Nieh-lu-ta • Pamplo Nerouda • Neftalí Ricardo Reyes • Bāblū Nīrūdā • Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto • Nieluda • Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto • Neftali Reyes Basualto • Neftali Reyes Basoalto • Neftali Ricardo Reyes • Neftalí Reyes Basualto • Pāplō Nerūda • Neftalí Reyespeneto

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I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Well, now
If little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you
Little by little
If suddenly you forget me
Do not look for me
For I shall already have forgotten you

If you think it long and mad the wind of banners that passes through my life
And you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots
Remember
That on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms
And my roots will set off to seek another land

I want
To do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

As if you were on fire from within.

The moon lives in the lining of your skin.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Someday, somewhere - anywhere, unfailingly, you'll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life.

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
Like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.

Sonnet XVII

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way than this:

where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

so I wait for you like a lonely house
till you will see me again and live in me.
Till then my windows ache.

But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me.

I love you as certain dark things are loved, secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.