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C.P. Cavafy Quotes - Page 2

Days to come stand in front of us like a row of lighted candles— golden, warm, and vivid candles. Days gone by fall behind us, a gloomy line of snuffed-out candles; the nearest are smoking still, cold, melted, and bent.

Days to come stand in front of us like a row of lighted candles— golden, warm, and vivid candles. Days gone by fall behind us, a gloomy line of snuffed-out candles; the nearest are smoking still, cold, melted, and bent. I don’t want to look at them: their shape saddens me, and it saddens me to remember their original light. I look ahead at my lighted candles. I don’t want to turn for fear of seeing, terrified, how quickly that dark line gets longer, how quickly the snuffed-out candles proliferate.

C.P. Cavafy
Fall, Dark, Light

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.

C.P. Cavafy
Wise, People, Hearing

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.

C.P. Cavafy
Father, Important, Scripture
Constantine P. Cavafy, “A Byzantine Nobleman In Exile Composing Verses”

I'm practically broke and homeless. This fatal city, Antioch, has devoured all my money: this fatal city with its extravagant life.

C.P. Cavafy
Cities, Homeless, Broke
Constantine P. Cavafy, “To Have Taken The Trouble”

And from this marvellous pan-Hellenic expedition, triumphant, brilliant in every way, celebrated on all sides, glorified incomparable, we emerged: the great new Hellenic world.

C.P. Cavafy
Way, Sides, World

Give me artificial flowers - porcelain and metal glories - neither fading nor decaying, forms unaging. Flowers of the splendid gardens of another place, where Forms and Styles and Knowledge dwell. I love flowers made of glass or gold, true Art's true gifts, their painted hues more beautiful than nature's, worked in nacre and enamel, with perfect leaves and branches.

C.P. Cavafy
Love, Beautiful, Art

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.

C.P. Cavafy
Distance, Responsibility, Passion
"The Regiment of the Senses". Poem by Constantine P. Cavafy, transl. by Manuel Savidis, www.cavafy.com.

He wasn't completely wrong, poor old Gemistus (let Lord Andronicus and the patriarch suspect him if they like), in wanting us, telling us to become pagan once again.

C.P. Cavafy
Pagan, Lord, Poor

The holy Cross goes forward; it brings joy and consolation to every quarter where Christians live; and these God-fearing people, elated, stand in their doorways and greet it reverently, the strength, the salvation of the universe, the Cross.

C.P. Cavafy
Christian, People, Joy
Constantine P. Cavafy, “A Great Procession Of Priests And Laymen”

Nero wasn't worried at all when he heard the utterance of the Delphic Oracle: "Beware the age of seventy-three." Plenty of time to enjoy himself still. He's thirty. The deadline the god has given him is quite enough to cope with future dangers.

C.P. Cavafy
Age, Oracles, Utterance
"Constantine P. Cavafy: Collected Poems". Book by Constantine Cavafy, p. 87, 2009.

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