C.P. Cavafy Quotes
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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.
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I'm practically broke and homeless. This fatal city, Antioch, has devoured all my money: this fatal city with its extravagant life.
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Arriving there is what you are destined for
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If you are one of the truly elect, be careful how you attain your eminence.
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Return often and take me, beloved sensation, return and take me - When memory of the body awakens, and old desire again runs through the blood; when the lips and skin remember, and the hands feel as if they touch again.
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When you set out for Ithaca, ask that your way be long
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One candle is enough. Its gentle light will be more suitable, will be more gracious when the Shades arrive, the Shades of Love.
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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.
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Roses by the head, jasmine at the feet so appear the longings that have passed without being satisfied, not one of them granted a night of sensual pleasure, or one of its radiant mornings.
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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.
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From all I did and all I said let no one try to find out who I was.
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Have Ithaka always in your mind. Your arrival there is what you are destined for. But don't in the least hurry the journey.
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Body, remember not only how much you were loved, not only the beds you lay on, but also those desires glowing openly in eyes that looked at you, trembling for you in voices.
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The days of the future stand in front of us Like a line of candles all alight Golden and warm and lively little candles.
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Try to keep them, poet, those erotic visions of yours, however few of them there are that can be stilled. Put them, half-hidden, in your lines.
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From my most unnoticed actions,
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To certain people there comes a day when they must say the great Yes or the great No.
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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.
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Honor to those who in the life they lead
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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.
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When you set out on your journey to Ithaca, pray that the road is long, full of adventure, full of knowledge.
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And if you can't shape your life the way you want, at least try as much as you can not to degrade it.
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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.
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What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum? The barbarians are due here today.