Nov 2 / 2020

60 great quotes by Federico García Lorca

A selection of famous quotes and reflections of this great Spanish writer.

The name of Federico Garcia Lorca is widely known in Spanish literature.. One of the greatest exponents of Spanish poetry and drama and one of the main figures of the generation of 27, this poet, writer and playwright has left throughout his work countless phrases and reflections to remember on various topics.

In this article we present a series of phrases by Federico García Lorca that allow us to see his point of view on life and those elements that he considered primordial.

Sixty great phrases by Federico García Lorca

Here are sixty of Lorca's phrases, which speak of themes such as love, hope, destiny and art, all of them frequent elements of his work.

1. Poetry does not want followers, it wants lovers.

Poetry is only possible if it is done from the Heart and expressing what you feel, not as something rational or as an attempt to meddle or to train one's abilities.

2. Discard sadness and melancholy. Life is kind, it has few days and only now we have to enjoy it.

This phrase tells us that we should make the most of our life, even though we may sometimes feel pain.

3. As I have not worried about being born, I do not worry about dying.

We do not control when we are going to die or how long we will live, so we should not obsess about it but about living.

4. Luck comes to those who least expect it.

Often, things happen when you are least looking for and expecting them.

5. Only mystery makes us live. Only mystery

The mysterious, the unknown, is what drives us to search, to be curious and excited about life.

6. The most terrible of all feelings is the feeling of having dead hope.

Hopelessness makes us feel that nothing we do will make sense, depriving us of the desire to fight to achieve our dreams.

7. He who wants to scratch the moon, will scratch his own heart.

Expresses the need to take risks, to learn to lose, to feel pain, if we want to achieve our dreams.

8. I feel my chest full of little hearts, like bells.

This phrase shows the excitement, the nervousness and the joy of feeling illusion with something or someone.

9. I don't believe that any artist works in a feverish state.

The artist is not a sick person or someone who depends on sudden bursts of genius, but someone who is able to express what is inside him in a coherent and beautiful way.

10. Books! Books! Here is a magic word that is equivalent to saying "love, love", and which people should ask for as they ask for bread.

Culture is something primordial for Lorca, since it allows the human being to learn and develop.

11. I want to cry because I feel like it

To cry, to express one's feelings, is something positive that frees us and allows us to overcome things.

12. A woman was not born to be understood, but to be loved.

What we should do is not pretend to know and understand everything about others, but to love them.

13. The famous man has the bitterness of carrying his chest cold and pierced by deaf lanterns that others direct over them.

Fame means that others notice what you do, criticize you and focus their gaze on you, which can be painful for those who have it.

14. To be silent and to burn is the biggest punishment we can give ourselves.

Part of the play "Blood Wedding", expresses that silence can cause deep suffering in the one who keeps it.

15. Poetry is the union of two words that one never supposed could come together and that form something like a mystery.

Poetry is something unique, in that a work is formed from what one feels, often ignoring what it means.

16. Waiting, the knot unravels and the fruit ripens

Time makes us grow and learn, as well as achieve our goals if we act to reach them.

17. Loneliness is the great carver of the spirit.

Although it can be painful, solitude makes us learn what and how we are, as well as reflect on what we want.

18. And even if you did not love me, I would love you for your somber look, as the lark loves the new day only for the dew.

Unrequited love causes much suffering, but unrequited love will not make you stop loving and admiring that person.

19. On the flag of freedom, I embroidered the greatest love of my life.

To love and to be free are two concepts that go hand in hand, influencing and stimulating each other.

20. Theater is poetry that goes out of the book to become human. And in becoming human it speaks and shouts, cries and despairs.

A great playwright, Lorca considered that theater allows us to express in a lively and direct way the core of what art is: the expression of our being.

21. Green I love you green. Green wind. Green branches. The boat on the sea and the horse on the mountain.

Nature was also a source of inspiration for Lorca.

22. Look to the right and to the left of time and let your heart learn to be at peace.

This phrase expresses the need to focus on the present, being able to look at the past and the future without feeling nostalgia for the former or anxiety about the latter.

23. Harmony made flesh, you are the genial summary of the lyrical. In you sleeps melancholy, the secret of the kiss and the cry.

This phrase expresses the feelings awakened by the loved one, and what he inspires in one's own being.

24. The physical, biological, natural agony of a body by hunger, thirst or cold lasts little, very little. But the agony of the unsatisfied soul lasts a lifetime.

Lorca expresses the need to live our life as we wish to live it, being important to feel satisfied with what we do with the little time we have.

25. Because you believe that time heals and that walls cover up, and it's not true, it's not true.

There are pains that do not pass with time and cannot be hidden, but must be expressed and worked through if we want to overcome them.

26. Our ideal does not reach the stars: it is serene, simple. We would like to make honey like bees, or to have a sweet voice or a strong cry, or to walk easily on the grass or breasts where our children suckle.

This phrase speaks of expectations and desires, of what we would like to become.

27. There are things locked inside the walls that, if they suddenly came out into the street and shouted, would fill the world.

We tend to hide and conceal many feelings, sensations and thoughts, usually being more what is hidden than what is expressed.

28. Translation destroys the spirit of the language

The language in which one expresses oneself contains to a large extent part of the nature of the message being transmitted. Attempting to translate it alters it.

29. Trees that sing are cut down and wither. And the serene mountains become plains. But the song of water is an eternal thing

Time passes for all, but some things remain. Like dreams and ideas.

30. I am not a man, nor a poet, nor a leaf, but a wounded pulse that senses the beyond.

We are beings with impulses and feelings that must be free to express and relate to the world.

31. In an ark of kisses of mouths already closed, is eternal captive, of the sister heart.

This phrase speaks to us of the melancholy, generated by the memory of the love lived in the past and lost.

32. History is not only verified in poetry but, thanks to it, it is condensed, acquires a meaning, creates images and symbols in which Americans recognize themselves.

Poetry allows to express what people think, feel and live, being part of history and allowing to be free.

33. To whom you tell the secret you give your freedom

Trust is something very precious, since the one who trusts risks part of his being. It must be respected and one must work to be worthy of it.

34. The first kiss that tasted like a kiss and was for my lips children like fresh rain.

The author recalls the emotion and sensations of kissing a loved one.

35. Nothing disturbs the past centuries. We cannot tear a sigh from the old.

The past is past. We must focus on changing what we can change, the present and the future.

36. To have a child is not to have a bouquet of roses.

The children are not a mere complement or something that only supposes joys. They are little people of which it is necessary to take care, with what they suppose a great responsibility.

37. Poetic creation is an indecipherable mystery, like the mystery of the birth of man. One hears voices, but one does not know from where, and it is useless to worry about where they come from.

Phrases that speak to us of inspiration, as something that should not try to be reasoned, but that seeks to express itself without further ado.

38. There is childlike sweetness in the still morning

Stillness and silence can convey a deep sense of peace and joy, showing us a world in which to act and to discover.

39. A clear repose and there our kisses, echoing sounding moles, would open far away. And your warm heart, nothing more

Again, this phrase reflects love and passion as a force that makes us feel alive.

40. The night doesn't want to come so that you won't come, nor I can go. But I'll go, even if a sun of scorpions eats my temple

We must fight for our love, even if everything seems to go against it.

41. When the moon rises the bells are lost and the impenetrable paths appear. When the moon rises, the sea covers the earth and the heart feels like an island in the infinite.

The author makes us see the night as a moment of inspiration and as a moment in which dreams arise. That moment in which we stop acting with reason to move to the heart.

42. Towns are books. Cities are newspapers liars

Criticism of falsehood, hypocrisy and the need to give a good image typical of the modern and urban world, which make us unable to observe the truth of things.

43. The two elements that the traveler captures in the big city are extrahuman architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish

As in the previous sentence, it is expressed that in the city one tends to have a stressful and unhuman attitude towards life.

44. Fill my madness with words or let me live in my serene night of the soul, forever dark.

Human interaction is something fundamental, which can lead us to achieve great things or to destroy us completely. In this phrase we are talking about love, about the need for contact with the one we love.

45. There are souls to whom one feels like leaning out, like to a window full of sunshine.

Some people awaken in us the need and the desire to approach them, they generate confidence and inspire us.

46. The language of the people puts the verses in diminutive. Nothing is so inciting for confidence and love.

The author expresses the beauty of natural language, awakening sensations of closeness among the speakers.

47. How hard it is for us to cross the thresholds of all doors!

A small part of his poem "Secrets", reflects the difficulty of crossing the barriers that we put ourselves and others put for us to know the truth about them.

48. Listen, my son, to the silence. It is an undulating silence, a silence where valleys and echoes slip and that inclines the foreheads towards the ground.

Silence is neither inexpressive nor empty, but full of meaning.

49. Every minute, every person, every attitude can be the germ of a dramatic work. Every creature that we meet goes through different dramatic climates in its life, in infinite combination until its last scene in which it lies down to die.

Every being has its history, living its life and experiencing great moments of both happiness and sadness.

50. The snow of the soul has flakes of kisses and scenes that sank in the shadow or in the light of the one who thinks of them.

In this phrase Lorca tells us about the memory and desire for someone loved, and how it has affected us.

51. Don't look at me anymore! If you want I'll give you my eyes, which are fresh, and my back so that you can fix the hump you have.

Envy is the theme of this phrase, expressing the desire and the continuous rumination and observation of the envious with respect to the envied and the one who possesses it.

52. If hope is extinguished and Babel is begun, what torch will illuminate the paths on Earth?

This phrase refers to the hopelessness and the lack of communication and understanding with our fellow men, and the pain that it can suppose.

53. Life in the cemetery is so sad! Frog, start singing!

Fragment of the poem "El diamante", it expresses a sense of anguish, sadness and uneasiness about what may be to come.

54. I want to sleep a while, a while, a minute, a century; but let everyone know that I am not dead; that there is a stable of gold on my lips; that I am a little friend of the West wind; that I am the immense shadow of my tears

Reflection of the feeling of tiredness, of the desire to rest and sink into the oblivion of pain without completely disappearing.

55. But the two has never been a number because it is an anguish and its shadow.

Lorca expresses in this verse that it is not easy to be two, especially when one of the parties is only limited to projecting on the other his fear or his fear of not being enough by himself in the form of dependence or codependence. To love, and to really be two, supposes being two independent beings even though we are linked by our feelings.

56. You will never understand what I love you, because you sleep in me and you are asleep. I hide you crying, pursued by a voice of penetrating steel.

These verses refer to the love that is silent and the pain it causes in those who do not communicate it.

57. Autumn will come with conches, grapes of fog and mountains grouped together, but nobody will want to look at your eyes, because you have died forever.

Verse of the poem "Absent Soul", reflects with sadness that the one who dies will never again feel or live what happens in the world.

58. We must give the perfume that our souls contain! We must be all song, all light and goodness; we must open ourselves completely in the face of the black night, so that we may be filled with the immortal dew!

In spite of pain and suffering, we must do everything possible to make the world a better place.

59. What matters most to me is to live

The author expresses that what is most important is to make our life the way we want it to be, fighting to achieve our dreams without letting fear restrain us.

60. Heart: Why do you command me, if I don't want to?

Love is not something rational. We do not choose who we fall in love with, nor why. It simply arises.

(Updated at Apr 12 / 2024)