18 Leonard Cohen Quotes on Love

Leonard Cohen quotes on love

1. and you kissed me shy as though I'd never been your lover

2. Rust rust rust in the engines of love and time

3. What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is the caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love.

12. 'You have loved enough, now let me be the lover.' You could say that God is speaking to you or the cosmos, or your lover. It just means, like, Forget it. Lean back and be loved by all that is already loving you. It is your effort at love that is preventing you from experiencing it. It is like if you ever taught kids how to swim. The most difficult thing is Goddam to understand that they will float, if they relax, if they hold their breath and relax, they will actually float. For most kids it is difficult to swim. They feel they are going to sink like a stone to the bottom of the lake.

13. Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river. You can hear the boats go by, You can spend the night beside her, And you know that she's half crazy But that's why you want to be there, And she feeds you tea and oranges That come all the way from China. And just when you mean to tell her That you have no love to give her Then she gets you on her wavelength And she lets the river answer That you've always been her lover. And you want to travel with her, And you want to travel blind, And you know that she will trust you, For you've touched her perfect body with your mind.

14. And she shows you where to look Among the garbage and the flowers. There are heroes in the seaweed, There are children in the morning, They are leaning out for love, And they will lean that way forever, While Suzanne holds the mirror.

18. When I left they were sleeping, I hope you run into them soon. Don't turn on the lights, you can read their address by the moon. And you won't make me jealous if I hear that they sweetened your night: We weren't lovers like that and besides it would still be all right.

19. I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm, Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm, Yes many loved before us, I know that we are not new, In city and in forest they smiled like me and you, But let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't untie, your eyes are soft with sorrow, Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.

20. 'Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye'

34. If you want a lover I'll do anything you ask me to. And if you want another kind of love I'll wear a mask for you.

42. And here you are hurried, And here you are gone; And here is the love, That it's all built upon.

43. Here is your cross, Your nails and your hill; And here is your love, That lists where it will

44. May everyone live, And may everyone die. Hello, my love, And my love, Goodbye.

47. I'll try to say a little more: Love went on and on Until it reached an open door - Then Love Itself Love Itself was gone.

48. You whisper, 'You have loved enough, Now let me be the Lover.'

49. I swept the marble chambers, But you sent me down below. You kept me from believing Until you let me know: That I am not the one who loves - It's love that chooses me. When hatred with his package comes, You forbid delivery.

53. It's true that all the men you knew were dealers / who said they were through with dealing / Every time you gave them shelter / I know that kind of man / It's hard to hold the hand of anyone / who is reaching for the sky just to surrender

58. Transparent, weightless, luminous/ Uncovering the two of us/ On that fundamental ground/ Where love's unwilled, unleashed, unbound/ And half the perfect world is found.'