All Quotes by Constantine P. Cavafy
“Επιθυμίες”
“You won't find a new country, won't find another shore. you've destroyed it everywhere in the world.”
“When setting out upon your way to Ithaca, full of adventure, full of lore.”
“Body, remember not only how much you were loved, trembling for you in voices.”
“People of Kommagini, let the glory of Antiochos, everything beyond that belongs to the gods.”
“The Spartans weren't to be led That's certainly one point of view. Quite understandable.”
“The days of the future stand in front of us Golden and warm and lively little candles.”
“I look before me at my lighted candles, How quickly the candles multiply that have been put out.”
“And from this marvellous pan-Hellenic expedition, the great new Hellenic world.”
“He wasn’t completely wrong, poor old Gemistus in wanting us, telling us to become pagan once again.”
“What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?The barbarians are due here today.”
“Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today and things like that dazzle the barbarians.”
“Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion? Those people were a kind of solution.”
“I'm practically broke and homeless. this fatal city with its extravagant life.”
“Whatever job they give me, if they frustrate me, it's not my fault.”
“One of the three will want me anyway. I would gladly have gone along with him.”
“The frivolous can call me frivolous. the Holy Fathers, or the Scriptures, or the Canons of the Councils.”
“The holy Cross goes forward; it brings joy and consolation the strength, the salvation of the universe, the Cross.”
“The empire is delivered at last. reigns no longer.”
“He knows he’s aged a lot: he sees it, feels it. that cheat who said: “Tomorrow. You have plenty of time.””
“He remembers impulses bridled, the joy now mocks his senseless caution.”
“And if you can’t shape your life the way you want, by too much activity and talk.”
“The love they felt wasn’t, of course, what it once had been; But to be separated, that wasn’t what they themselves wanted.”
“Of what’s to come the wise perceive the people hear nothing whatsoever.”
“Don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now, don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.”
“When they saw Patroklos dead by this work of death they had to look at.”
“Immoral to a degree — and probably more than a degree — his graceless prudery, his ridiculous beard.”
“Things impolitic and dangerous: Enthusiasm for the ancient gods”
“The matter, says Mardonios, has gone too far, and everyone marvels at his Christian piety.”
“His friends weren’t Christians; that much was certain. They were, after all, Greeks. Nothing in excess, Augustus.”
“That we’ve broken their statues, their souls still keep your memory.”
“He who hopes to grow in spirit This way he'll grow virtuously into wisdom.”
“Roses by the head, jasmine at the feet — a night of sensual pleasure, or one of its radiant mornings.”
“A month passes by and brings another month. And tomorrow ends up no longer like tomorrow.”
“Nero wasn’t worried at all when he heard to cope with future dangers.”
“And in Spain Galba Galba, the old man in his seventy-third year.”
“Guard, O my soul, against pomp and glory. the more searching and careful you need to be.”
“If you are one of the truly elect, be careful how you attain your eminence.”
“Honor to those who in the life they lead yet without hating those who lie.”
“One candle is enough. Its gentle light when the Shades arrive, the Shades of Love.”
“It will be a great relief when a window opens. Who knows what new things it will expose?”
“Try to keep them, poet, Put them, half-hidden, in your lines.”
“From all I did and all I said let no one try to find out who I was.”
“From my most unnoticed actions, from these alone will I be understood.”
“The greatest gods of our glorious Greece that they were frightened by a gesture.”
“He was a quiet, gentle man, was never precisely explained.”
“On hearing about powerful love, respond, be moved remember how much your imagination created for you.”
“How much we’ll tell down there, how much, we’ll disclose freely and clearly down there.”
“As the shores of Ithaca gradually Coldly, devoid of love.”
“Now the longed-for signal has appeared. Yet when happiness comes of hope and expectation.”
“Of course many people will have much to say. can always be found at a moment's notice.”