Pedro Calderon de la Barca Quotes

What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story. And the greatest good is little enough: for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.

Green is the prime color of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises.

In this treacherous world Nothing is the truth nor a lie. Everything depends on the color Of the crystal through which one sees it

But whether it be dream or truth, to do well is what matters. If it be truth, for truth's sake. If not, then to gain friends for the time when we awaken.

When love is not madness, it is not love.

For man's greatest crime is to have been born.

All life is a dream, and all dreams are dreams.

The heart is an astrologer that always divines the truth.

A good action is never lost; it is a treasure laid up and guarded for the doer's need.

And yet, and yet, in these our ghostly lives, Half night, half day, half sleeping, half awake, How if our waking life, like that of sleep, Be all a dream in that eternal life To which we wake not till we sleep in death

Speak no evil of women; I tell thee the meanest of them deserves respect; for of women do we not all come?

Light-enchanted sunflower, thou Who gazest ever true and tender On the sun's revolving splendour.

They say that the best counsel is that of woman.

For even in dreams a good deed is not lost.

The fox is very cunning, but he is more cunning who catches the fox.

How surely a knowledge of the world hardens the heart!

One may know how to gain a victory, and know not how to use it.

Never confide your secrets to paper; it is like throwing a stone in the air; and if you know who throws the stone, you do not know where it may fall.

If a pretty woman only knew how anger improved her beauty! Her complexion needs no other paint than indignation.

No windows give a better view than those a man brings with him in his head, not asking for tickets of admission, since at all functions, festivals, or feasts he looks out with the same nice self-composure.

Our treasures trifles seem, and all our life is dreaming, and the dreams themselves are dreams.

Restless sunflower; cease to move.

Even in dreams doing good is not wasted.

Dreams are rough copies of the waking soul Yet uncorrected of the higher will, So that men sometimes in their dreams confess An unsuspected, or forgotten, self; -Since Dreaming, Madness, Passion, are akin In missing each that salutory rein Of reason, and the grinding will of man.

Great events have sent before them their announcements.