Pablo Neruda Quotes About Love and Life

Pablo Neruda is one of the most celebrated poets of the 20th century. His work has inspired generations of poets and readers alike. However, Neruda was not just a great poet, he was also a passionate and complex man, with a rich and varied personal life. In this blog post, we have shared 56 Pablo Neruda quotes about love and life.

pablo neruda quotes

Neruda was born in Chile in 1904. His father was a railway worker and his mother was a schoolteacher. Neruda was a gifted student and he excelled in his studies. He went on to study at the University of Chile and then at the University of Barcelona.

Pablo Neruda received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971. When he was 13 years old, he became known as a poet, and he wrote in a variety of styles, including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and passionate love poems like the ones in his collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924).

During his lifetime, Neruda held numerous diplomatic positions in various countries and served as a Senator for the Chilean Communist Party. When Chilean President Gabriel González Videla declared communism illegal in 1948, a warrant for Neruda’s arrest was issued. Friends hid him for months in the basement of a house in Valparaso, and in 1949 he escaped into Argentina via a mountain pass near Maihue Lake; he would not return to Chile for more than three years. He was a close advisor to Chile’s socialist President Salvador Allende, and when he returned to Chile after accepting his Nobel Prize in Stockholm, Allende invited him to read in front of 70,000 people at the Estadio Nacional.

56 Pablo Neruda Quotes

  1. “Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”

2. “Let us forget with generosity those who cannot love us”

3. “You are like nobody since I love you.”

4. “Love is born of memory, lives from intelligence and dies from forgetfulness.”

5. “Those who destroy their self-love, those who do not allow themselves to be helped, die slowly.”

pablo neruda spanish quotes

6. “Today is today, and yesterday is gone. There is no doubt.”

7. “Our love was born outside the walls, in the wind, in the night, in the earth, and that’s why the clay and the flower, the mud and the roots know your name.”

8. “Love is the mystery of water and a star.” 

9. “What did the earth teach the trees? How to speak to the sky.”

10. “I loved her, and sometimes she loved me.”

11. “Loving is a journey with water and with stars, with smothered air and abrupt storms of flour.”

12. “My love has two lifetimes to love you. That’s how I can love you when I don’t, and still love you when I do.”

13. “You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.”

14. “I want to do with you what spring does with cherry trees.”

15. “Love is a clash of lightnings”

16. “I love you in this way because I don’t know any other way of loving.”

17.  “Is there anything in the world sadder than a train standing in the rain?” 

18. “To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life.”

19. “I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.”

pablo neruda quotes about life

Pablo Neruda Love Quotes

20. “I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride. I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.” 

21. “If nothing saves us from death, at least love should save us from life”

22. “I am a book of snow, a spacious hand, an open meadow, a circle that waits, I belong to the earth and its winter.”

23. “Love! Love until the night collapses!”

24. “I loved you without knowing it, and I looked for your memory. In empty houses I entered with a lantern to steal your portrait”

25. “My eyes were consumed by your loveliness, but you have become my eyes.”

26. “Do not do with love what a child does with his balloon; when he has it, he ignores it, and when he loses it, he cries.”

27. “I have forgotten your love, yet I seem to glimpse you in every window.”

28. “Poetry is an act of peace.”

29. “Someday, somewhere – anywhere, unfailingly, you’ll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life.”

30. “Love has to be, flowering like the stars, and measureless as a kiss.”

Pablo Neruda Quotes About Life

31. “I am no longer in love with her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”

32. “Let us forget with generosity those who cannot love us.”

33. “It was my destiny to love and say goodbye.”

34. “Take bread away from me, take away water if you wish; but never deny me your smile.”

35. “Everything is so alive, that I can be alive. Without moving I can see it all. In your life I see everything that lives.”

36. “I love you as one loves certain dark things.”

37. “And one by one the nights between our separated cities are joined to the night that unites us.” 

38. “How I’d know how to love you, woman– how I’d know how to love you, to love you as no one ever knew how! To die and still love you more.”

39. “I love you as one loves certain dark things, secretly, between the shadow and the soul.”

40. “I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.” 

41. “When everything seems to be set to show me off as intelligent, the fool I always keep hidden takes over all that I say.”

42. “Give me, for my life, all lives, give me all the pain of everyone, I’m going to turn it into hope.”

43. “I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;”

44. “Bring your substance deep down to me, heavily, covering my eyes, let your existence cut across me, supposing that my heart is destroyed.”

46. “There were thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit. There were grief and the ruins, and you were the miracle.”

45. “To feel the affection that comes from those whom we do not know, widens out the boundaries of our being, and unites all living things.”

Famous Pablo Neruda Quotes

47. “I can write the saddest lines tonight. To think I don’t have her. To feel I have lost her. To hear the vast night, vaster without her. The words fall on the soul like dew to the grass.”

48. “She – the one who loved me – died in the spring…and took the spring to heaven.”

49. “For me writing is like breathing. I could not live without breathing and I could not live without writing.”

50. “There is a certain pleasure in madness, which only the madman knows.”

51. “Luck is the excuse for failures.”

52. “Someday, somewhere—anywhere, unfailingly, you’ll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life.”

53. “He who does not travel, who does not read, who does not listen to music, who does not find grace in himself, she who does not find grace in herself, dies slowly.”

54. “Sometimes I get up at dawn, and even my soul is wet.”

55. “Love is not about property, diamonds and gifts. It is about sharing your very self with the world around you.”

56. “I love you only because it’s you the one I love. I hate you deeply, and hating you bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you is that I do not see you but love you blindly.”

30 Philip Fisher Quotes...

 10 Short Philip Fisher Quotes to Inspire You “I have...

45 Pat Flynn Quotes...

“Be open to and welcoming of unforeseen events because...

Mukesh Ambani Quotes About...

“Dance to your own music and take some risks...

Neil Armstrong Quotes About...

“Ever since I was a little boy, I dreamed...

Michael Milken Quotes On...

“This provides something that is readable for the layperson...

Michael Dell Quotes About...

“Don’t spend so much time trying to choose the...

30 Philip Fisher Quotes (LEGENDARY INVESTOR)

 10 Short Philip Fisher Quotes to Inspire You “I have already made up my mind, don't confuse me with facts.” 2. “When profit margins of a...

45 Pat Flynn Quotes On Entrepreneurship, Success and Life

“Be open to and welcoming of unforeseen events because those unplanned moments are often the seeds of spectacular opportunities in your life.” - Pat...

Mukesh Ambani Quotes About Success, Life and Hard Work

“Dance to your own music and take some risks in life, because it is often the risk taker who changes the course of history…...

Neil Armstrong Quotes About Space, Life and Success

“Ever since I was a little boy, I dreamed I would do something important in aviation.” https://youtu.be/XeOry41uDIQ Famous Neil Armstrong Quotes “Shoot for the stars but if...

Michael Milken Quotes On Wealth

“This provides something that is readable for the layperson and has been vetted by some of the top scientists. It helps you separate the...

Michael Dell Quotes About Entrepreneurship and Success

“Don’t spend so much time trying to choose the perfect opportunity, that you miss the right opportunity.” - Michael Dell https://youtu.be/24yT--WVTmI Inspirational Michael Dell Quotes “I...

Howard Schultz Quotes About Starbucks and Leadership

“In times of adversity and change, we really discover who we are and what we’re made of." - Howard Schultz https://youtu.be/UtBdQfElhv0 Famous Howard Schultz Quotes “Dream...

George Soros Quotes On Investing, Trading and Money

“It’s not whether you’re right or wrong, but how much money you make when you’re right and how much you lose when you’re wrong.”...

Cliff Lerner Quotes on Startup, Success and Life

“Lord give me the confidence of someone that has never built anything writing advice threads on how to build a startup.” - Cliff Lerner https://youtu.be/HHQB2eMuD3E?si=1YpaJ-2CAWOOvqtl Famous...