22 Constantine P. Cavafy Quotes

Constantine P. Cavafy quotes

1. But Argos can do without the house of Atreus. Ancient houses are not eternal.

2. We won't be deceived by words such as Indispensable, Unique, and Great. Someone else indispensable and unique and great can always be found at a moment's notice.

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. Sensual pleasures will have much to teach him. He won't be afraid of the destructive act: half the house will have to come down. This way he'll grow virtuously into wisdom.

4. 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.

5. 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 full of courage, say goodbye to her, to Alexandria who is leaving.

6. When setting out upon your way to Ithaca, wish always that your course be long, full of adventure, full of lore.

7. 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.

8. In addition he was that best of all things, Hellenic - mankind has no quality more precious: everything beyond that belongs to the gods.

9. I created you while I was happy, while I was sad, with so many incidents, so many details. And, for me, the whole of you has been transformed into feeling.

10. 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.

11. What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum? The barbarians are due here today.

12. Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas? Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts, rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds? Why are they carrying elegant canes beautifully worked in silver and gold? Because the barbarians are coming today and things like that dazzle the barbarians.

13. 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.

14. Whatever job they give me, I'll try to be useful to the country. That's what I intend.

15. 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.

16. The almighty gods ought to have taken the trouble to create a fourth, a decent man. I would gladly have gone along with him.

17. He has the strength (and of course the limitations) of the recluse, who, though not afraid of the world, always stands at a slight angle to it.

18. He was a man who starts at a certain age with all signs showing that he's unable to produce anything of importance. And then, by refusing and refusing things which are offered him, in the end he finds, he sees, as they say; he becomes certain that he's found his own expression. It's a splendid example of a man who, through his refusals, finds his way.

19. The erotic world he depicts is one of casual pickups and short-lived affairs. Love, there, is rarely more than physical passion, and when tenderer emotions exist, they are almost always one-sided. At the same time, he refuses to pretend that his memories of sensual pleasure are unhappy or spoiled by feelings of guilt.

20. Cavafy's attitude toward the poetic vocation is an aristocratic one. His poets do not think of themselves as persons of great public importance and entitled to universal homage, but, rather, as citizens of a small republic in which one is judged by one's peers and the standard of judgment is strict.

1. “Επιθυμίες Σαν σώματα ωραία νεκρών που δεν εγέρασαν και τάκλεισαν, με δάκρυα, σε μαυσωλείο λαμπρό, με ρόδα στο κεφάλι και στα πόδια γιασεμιά -- έτσ' η επιθυμίες μοιάζουν που επέρασαν χωρίς να εκπληρωθούν· χωρίς ν' αξιωθεί καμιά της ηδονής μια νύχτα, ή ένα πρωϊ της φεγγερό." Desires "Like beautiful bodies of the dead who had not grown old and they shut them, with tears, in a brilliant mausoleum, with roses at the head and jasmine at the feet -- this is what desires resemble that have passed without fulfillment; without any of them having achieved a night of sensual delight, or a morning of brightness.”

2. “As one long prepared, and graced with courage, as is right for you who were given this kind of city, go firmly to the window and listen with deep emotion, but not with the whining, the pleas of a coward; listen—your final delectation—to the voices, to the exquisite music of that strange procession, and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.”