Constantine P. Cavafy quotes - page 3

He who hopes to grow in spirit will have to transcend obedience and respect. He'll hold to some laws but he'll mostly violate both law and custom, and go beyond the established, inadequate norm. (Constantine P. Cavafy)
On hearing about powerful love, respond, be moved like an aesthete. On hearing about powerful love, respond, be moved like an aesthete. Only, fortunate as you've been, remember how much your imagination created for you. View quote
Constantine P. Cavafy
His friends weren't Christians; that much was certain. View quote
Constantine P. Cavafy
Perhaps the light will prove another tyranny. Who knows what new things it will expose? View quote
Constantine P. Cavafy
I created you while I was happy, while I was sad, with so many incidents, so many details. View quote
Constantine P. Cavafy
He knows he's aged a lot: he sees it, feels it. Yet it seems he was young just yesterday. So brief an interval, so very brief. View quote
Constantine P. Cavafy
The greatest gods of our glorious Greece appeared before you. View quote
Constantine P. Cavafy
The almighty gods ought to have taken the trouble to create a fourth, a decent man. I would gladly have gone along with him. View quote
Constantine P. Cavafy
Just to be on the first step should make you happy and proud. To have come this far is no small achievement: what you have done is a glorious thing. View quote
Constantine P. Cavafy
That we've broken their statues, that we've driven them out of their temples, doesn't mean at all that the gods are dead. View quote
Constantine P. Cavafy
It will be a great relief when a window opens. (Constantine P. Cavafy)
People of Kommagini, let the glory of Antiochos, the noble king, be celebrated as it deserves. View quote
Constantine P. Cavafy
When they saw Patroklos dead - so brave and strong, so young - the horses of Achilles began to weep. View quote
Constantine P. Cavafy
And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you. Wise as you have become, with so much experience, you must already have understood what these Ithacas mean. View quote
Constantine P. Cavafy
That we've broken their statues, that we've driven them out of their temples, doesn't mean at all that the gods are dead. O land of Ionia, they're still in love with you, their souls still keep your memory. View quote
Constantine P. Cavafy
Speak not of guilt, speak not of responsibility. When the Regiment of the Senses parades by, with music, and with banners; when the senses shiver and shudder, it is only a fool and and an irreverent person that will keep his distance, who will not embrace the good cause, marching towards the conquest of pleasures and passions. All of morality's laws – poorly understood and applied – are nil and cannot stand even for a moment, when the Regiment of the Senses parades by, with music, and with banners. View quote
Constantine P. Cavafy
The frivolous can call me frivolous. I've always been most punctilious about important things. And I insist that no one knows better than I do the Holy Fathers, or the Scriptures, or the Canons of the Councils. View quote
Constantine P. Cavafy
Of what's to come the wise perceive things about to happen. Sometimes during moments of intense study their hearing's troubled: the hidden sound of things approaching reaches them, and they listen reverently, while in the street outside the people hear nothing whatsoever. View quote
Constantine P. Cavafy
Don't mourn your luck that's failing now, work gone wrong, your plans all proving deceptive - don't mourn them uselessly. As one long prepared, and graced with courage, say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving. Above all, don't fool yourself, don't say it was a dream, your ears deceived you: don't degrade yourself with empty hopes like these. View quote
Constantine P. Cavafy
On hearing about powerful love, respond, be moved like an aesthete. Only, fortunate as you've been, remember how much your imagination created for you. View quote
Constantine P. Cavafy
You won't find a new country, won't find another shore. This city will always pursue you. You'll walk the same streets, grow old in the same neighbourhoods, turn grey in these same houses. You'll always end up in this city. Don't hope for things elsewhere: there's no ship for you, there's no road. Now that you've wasted your life here, in this small corner, you've destroyed it everywhere in the world. (Constantine P. Cavafy)
People of Kommagini, let the glory of Antiochos, the noble king, be celebrated as it deserves. He was a provident ruler of the country. He was just, wise, courageous. In addition he was that best of all things, Hellenic - mankind has no quality more precious: everything beyond that belongs to the gods. View quote
Constantine P. Cavafy
Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion? (How serious people's faces have become.) Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly, everyone going home lost in thought?Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven't come. And some of our men who have just returned from the border say there are no barbarians any longer.Now what's going to happen to us without barbarians? Those people were a kind of solution. View quote
Constantine P. Cavafy
One of the three will want me anyway. And my conscience is quiet about my not caring which one I choose: the three of them are equally bad for Syria. But, a ruined man, it's not my fault. I'm only trying, poor devil, to make ends meet. The almighty gods ought to have taken the trouble to create a fourth, a decent man. I would gladly have gone along with him. View quote
Constantine P. Cavafy
His friends weren't Christians; that much was certain. But even so they couldn't play as he could (brought up a Christian) with a new religious system, ludicrous in both theory and application. They were, after all, Greeks. Nothing in excess, Augustus. View quote
Constantine P. Cavafy