80 Pablo Neruda Quotes to Explore Love, Poetry and Life Itself
Pablo Neruda was a famous Chilean poet, diplomat and political activist. Born in 1904, in Parral, Chile, Neruda gained global fame due to his passionate love poems and political manifestos. He is considered the national poet of Chile and one of the most influential 20th-century poets of the Americas, as the following Pablo Neruda quotes will show.
At age 13, Neruda published his first poem in a daily local newspaper and three years later he moved to Santiago to study at the Universidad de Chile, but he abandoned his studies and devoted himself to poetry. By the age of 20, Neruda had already become one of the most famed Chilean poets. Due to his radical communist ideology, he was forced into exile but eventually returned to Chile and started to write prodigiously, garnering numerous awards and accolades, including the International Peace Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature. Neruda died of cancer in 1973, although there had been allegations that he was poisoned by Chile’s secret service.
Neruda’s works are celebrated as classics of Latin American literature and even today he remains one of the most popular and widely read poets. Lines from his poems serve as rallying songs and march anthems, recited at protests all over the world. The main reason why his poetry is savored so much is the passionate way he put into words feelings that are too subtle and deep to express. His love poems and odes recreate vivid scenes and convey intense emotions to his readers, being a reflection of Neruda’s own life, a unique amalgam of romance and revolution.
As a tribute to this great poet, here we have curated for you the most inspirational quotes from his works. Share them with friends and loved ones to enlighten them! Reflect upon them to gain insight and transform your perspective of the world!
Table of Contents
- Best Love Quotes and Poems By Pablo Neruda
- Meaningful Short Poetic Pablo Neruda Quotes
- Pablo Neruda Quotes About Unfulfilled Love and Love Lost
- Inspirational Pablo Neruda Quotes
- Pablo Neruda Life Quotes
- Pablo Neruda Quotes About Poetry, Writing and Literature
Best Love Quotes and Poems By Pablo Neruda
Love, passion and lust are central in Neruda’s poetry. Characterized by a poetic mastery that transcends cultural barriers, Neruda’s love poems are true masterpieces that combine fantastic imagery and a vibrant mix of literary elements.
- Love! Love until the night collapses! Pablo Neruda
- And when you appear all the rivers sound in my body, bells shake the sky, and a hymn fills the world. Pablo Neruda
- Love is not about property, diamonds and gifts. It is about sharing your very self with the world around you. Pablo Neruda
- I want
To do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.
Pablo Neruda - Love is a clash of lightnings. Pablo Neruda
- As if you were on fire from within.
The moon lives in the lining of your skin.
Pablo Neruda - I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
Pablo Neruda - And it follows that I am, because you are: it follows from ‘you are’, that I am, and we: and, because of love, you will, I will, we will, come to be. Pablo Neruda
- Your wide eyes are the only light I know from extinguished constellations. Pablo Neruda
- I hunger for your sleek laugh and your hands the color of a furious harvest. I want to eat the sunbeams flaring in your beauty. Pablo Neruda
- I say love, and the world populates itself with doves. Pablo Neruda
- But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me.
Pablo Neruda - 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.
Pablo Neruda - In this part of the story I am the one who
dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
because I love you, Love, in fire and in blood.
Pablo Neruda - Loving is a journey with water and with stars, with smothered air and abrupt storms of flour: loving is a clash of lightning-bolts and two bodies defeated by a single drop of honey. Pablo Neruda
- I have named you queen. There are taller than you, taller. There are purer than you, purer. There are lovelier than you, lovelier. But you are the queen. Pablo Neruda
- Love has to be… flowering like the stars, and measureless as a kiss. Pablo Neruda
- Our love was born outside the walls, in the wind, in the night, in the earth, and that’s why the clay and the flower, the mud and the roots know your name. Pablo Neruda
- At night I dream that you and I are two plants that grew together, roots entwined, and that you know the earth and the rain like my mouth, since we are made of earth and rain. Pablo Neruda
Meaningful Short Poetic Pablo Neruda Quotes
A collection of short but insightful poetic quotes that will make perfect captions and add sophistication to your Instagram and social media posts!
- You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming. Pablo Neruda
- If nothing saves us from death, at least love should save us from life. Pablo Neruda
- Love is so short, forgetting is so long. Pablo Neruda
- We must dream our way. Pablo Neruda
- Laughter is the language of the soul. Pablo Neruda
- Everything is ceremony in the wild garden of childhood. Pablo Neruda
- Love is the mystery of water and a star. Pablo Neruda
- In one kiss, you’ll know all I haven’t said. Pablo Neruda
- Every day you play with the light of the universe. Pablo Neruda
- Give me silence, water, hope
Give me struggle, iron, volcanoes.
Pablo Neruda - Let us forget with generosity those who cannot love us. Pablo Neruda
- Deny me bread, air, light, spring, but never your laughter for I would die. Pablo Neruda
- In you is the illusion of each day. You arrive like the dew to the cupped flowers. You undermine the horizon with your absence. Eternally in flight like the wave. Pablo Neruda
- You are like nobody since I love you. Pablo Neruda
- Do tears not yet spilled wait in small lakes? Pablo Neruda
- There is no space wider than that of grief. Pablo Neruda
- Green was the silence, wet was the light,
the month of June trembled like a butterfly.
Pablo Neruda - Absence is a house so vast that inside you will pass through its walls and hang pictures on the air. Pablo Neruda
- You are like night, calmed, constellated. Your silence is star-like, as distant, as true. Pablo Neruda
- In what language does rain fall over tormented cities? Pablo Neruda
- I need the sea because it teaches me. Pablo Neruda
- And one by one the nights between our separated cities are joined to the night that unites us. Pablo Neruda
- Two things make a story. The net and the air that falls through the net. Pablo Neruda
- Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness
And the infinite tenderness shattered you like a jar.
Pablo Neruda - Without doubt I praise the wild excellence. Pablo Neruda
- Why do trees conceal the splendor of their roots? Pablo Neruda
- Hour of nostalgia, hour of happiness, hour of solitude. Pablo Neruda
- Sometimes I get up at dawn, and even my soul is wet. Pablo Neruda
- I like on the table,
when we’re speaking,
the light of a bottle
of intelligent wine.
Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda Quotes About Unfulfilled Love and Love Lost
The bittersweetness of love, desire and love loneliness are themes often explored in Neruda’s poems which apart from expressing his own soul, represent an attempt to fathom the human psyche.
- It was my destiny to love and say goodbye. Pablo Neruda
- So I wait for you like a lonely house
till you will see me again and live in me.
Till then my windows ache.
Pablo Neruda - Shyness is a condition foreign to the heart – a category, a dimension which leads to loneliness. Pablo Neruda
- Tonight I can write the saddest lines
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Pablo Neruda - My feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping
but
I shall go on living.
Pablo Neruda - My soul is an empty carousel at sunset. Pablo Neruda
- From sorrow to, sorrow love crosses its islands and establishes roots that are watered by weeping. Pablo Neruda
- I have forgotten your love, yet I seem to glimpse you in every window. Pablo Neruda
- Well, now, if little by little you stop loving me I shall stop loving you little by little. Pablo Neruda
- Don’t leave me, even for an hour, because then the little drops of anguish will all run together, the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift into me, choking my lost heart. Pablo Neruda
- Only do not forget, if I wake up crying it’s only because in my dream I’m a lost child hunting through the leaves of the night for your hands. Pablo Neruda
Inspirational Pablo Neruda Quotes
Soul touching quotes to open you up to new perspectives by triggering thinking and reflection that will help you develop a deeper understanding of life.
- Only a burning patience will lead to the attainment of a splendid happiness. Pablo Neruda
- To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life. Pablo Neruda
- A child who does not play is not a child, but the man who doesn’t play has lost forever the child who lived in him and who he will miss terribly. Pablo Neruda
- I love all things, not only the grand but the infinitely small: thimble, spurs, plates, flower vases….. Pablo Neruda
- What did the earth teach the trees?
How to speak to the sky.
Pablo Neruda - He who does not travel, who does not read,
who does not listen to music,
who does not find grace in himself,
she who does not find grace in herself,
dies slowly.
Pablo Neruda - Give me your hand out of the depths sown by your sorrows. Pablo Neruda
- He who has nothing—it has been said many times—has nothing to lose but his chains. Pablo Neruda
- To feel the affection that comes from those whom we do not know … widens out the boundaries of our being, and unites all living things. Pablo Neruda
- Everything is so alive, that I can be alive. Without moving I can see it all. In your life I see everything that lives. Pablo Neruda
- In the eyes of mourning the land of dreams begins. Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda Life Quotes
Neruda had a great passion for life and always wrote in green ink, because to him green was the color of hope and life. The following quotes are a mirror of his thoughts and represent words of wisdom that are worth reflecting upon.
- Someday, somewhere – anywhere, unfailingly, you’ll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life. Pablo Neruda
- How much does a man live, after all?
Does he live a thousand days, or one only?
For a week, or for several centuries?
How long does a man spend dying?
What does it mean to say ‘for ever’?
Pablo Neruda - Take it all back. Life is boring, except for flowers, sunshine, your perfect legs. A glass of cold water when you are really thirsty. The way bodies fit together. Fresh and young and sweet. Coffee in the morning. These are just moments. I struggle with the in-betweens. I just want to never stop loving like there is nothing else to do, because what else is there to do? Pablo Neruda
- There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song – but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny. Pablo Neruda
- We are dust and to dust return. In the end we’re neither air, nor fire, nor water, just dirt, neither more nor less, just dirt, and maybe some yellow flowers. Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda Quotes About Poetry, Writing and Literature
Neruda considered poetry a high form of human expression and a gift to be shared with all of mankind. Although Neruda’s style evolved from romantic to surrealist his prose remained unmistakably passionate and emotional, always managing to fully engage the reader, making him enter the poem.
- Poetry is an act of peace. Peace goes into the making of a poet as flour goes into the making of bread. Pablo Neruda
- It was at that age that poetry came in search of me. Pablo Neruda
- And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture. Pablo Neruda
- Look around—there’s only one thing of danger for you here—poetry. Pablo Neruda
- The books that help you most are those which make you think that most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty. Pablo Neruda
- While I’m writing, I’m far away; and when I come back, I’ve gone. Pablo Neruda
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