The 20 best phrases of Pedro Salinas (and verses)

We review the best verses and thoughts of this representative of the Generation of '27.

Pedro Salinas (Madrid 1891 - Boston 1951) was one of the most acclaimed and remembered Spanish writers of the so-called Generation of '27.

His essays and poetic works were already a great success in his time, and the passing of the years has only increased his figure, worthy of study and analysis in academic and literary circles throughout the Spanish-speaking world.

Famous quotes by Pedro Salinas

Exiled to the United States after the Spanish Civil War because of his republicanist approaches, he lived in his own flesh the bitterness of the war and dedicated to this event many of his verses and writings.

In this article we are going to remember this great writer through a compilation of the best quotes by Pedro Salinas.

1. You always live in your actions. With your fingertips you touch the world, you pluck from it dawns, triumphs, colors, joys: it is your music. Life is what you play.

A sample of your poetic brilliance.

2. In this light of the poem, everything, from the most nocturnal kiss to the zenithal splendor, everything is much clearer.

Literature always illuminates what monotony silences.

3. Now I love you, as the sea loves its water: from the outside, from above, making storms, escapes, shelters, rests, calms with it without stopping.

A romantic reflection on unbridled love.

4. What you are distracts me from what you say.

A nice thought that dislocates what we really are with what we verbalize. Since the latter, at the end of the day, is only the way we show ourselves to the outside.

5. There was no need to search: your dream was my dream.

Sharing wishes and desires is the most poetic way to say I love you.

6. And you were never wrong, more than once, one night you were infatuated by a shadow, the only one you ever liked. A shadow it seemed. And you wanted to embrace it. And it was me.

About sentimental mistakes and their ephemeral nature.

7. You always live in your actions. With your fingertips you touch the world, you pluck from it dawns, triumphs, colors, joys: it is your music. Life is what you play.

Portrait of a pure soul.

8. When you chose me -love chose- I came out of the great anonymous of all, out of nothingness.

This verse by Pedro Salinas portrays the warmth of being loved.

9. And while they keep going round and round, giving themselves, deceiving themselves, your faces, your whims and your kisses, your fickle delights, your quick contacts with the world, I have arrived at the pure, immobile center of yourself, and see how you change, and you call it living, in everything, in everything if not in me, where you survive.

Beautiful poem to free interpretation of each reader.

10. Inside the man neither hope pushes nor memory holds.

One of those philosophical phrases that has been the subject of debate and analysis by Spanish and foreign writers.

11. I kissed you on the lips. Dense, red. It was a kiss so short, it lasted more than a flash of lightning, more than a miracle, more. The time after I gave it to you I didn't want it at all, I didn't want it at all before.

On the intensity and frugality of a kiss.

12. I don't trust the paper rose, so many times I made it with my own hands. Nor do I trust the other true rose, daughter of the sun and seasoning, the fiancée of the wind. Of you that I never made you, of you that never made you, of you I trust, round and sure chance.

Another sample of his poetic and creative virtuosity.

13. Tonight green, red, blue, very fast strange lights cross your eyes. Could it be your soul?

The joy of the present moment is not so much in what happens outside, but in what we feel subjectively.

14. I want you thus innocent, all alien, throbbing in what is outside you, your eyes proclaiming the vivid colored truths of the night.

A phrase of Pedro Salinas that interpellates a pure and noble love.

15. I know that when I call you among all the people in the world, only you will be you.

Even with a life plagued by comings and goings, Salinas retained the illusion of a pure and transcendent love.

16. I have no prison for you in my being. Your freedom keeps you for me. I'll let her go again, and through the sky, through the sea, through time, I'll watch her go towards her destiny. If her fate is me, she is waiting for you.

An ode to free love, in a complicated time.

17. Never words, hugs, will tell me that you existed, that you loved me: Never. White sheets, maps, auguries, telephones tell me; not you. And I'm hugging you without asking you, for fear that it's not true that you live and love me. And I'm hugging you without looking and without touching you. Lest I discover with questions, with caresses, that immense loneliness of loving you only me.

One of those phrases of disaffection that can freeze the blood.

18. In the night and the trasnoche, and love and trans-love, already changed in final horizons, you and I, of ourselves.

Romantic verse that awakens the conscience.

19. It's that I want to bring out your best you. That one that you did not see and that I see, swimming through your bottom, precious.

An incessant search to connect souls. Great reflection by Pedro Salinas.

20. Each perfect kiss pushes time away, pushes it back, widens the brief world where you can still kiss...

Another of his perfect verses.