60 great phrases by Federico García Lorca

The name of Federico García Lorca is widely known within Spanish literature. One of the greatest exponents of Spanish poetry and dramaturgy and one of the main figures of the generation of '27, this poet, writer and playwright has left throughout his work innumerable phrases and reflections for the memory regarding various thematic.

In this article we present a series of phrases by Federico García Lorca that allow you to see his point of view on life and those elements that he considered essential.

Sixty great phrases by Federico García Lorca

Here are some sixty phrases by Lorca, which talk about topics such as love, hope, destiny and art, all of them frequent elements of his work.

1. The poetry does not want followers, it wants lovers

Making poetry is only possible if it is done from the heart and expressing what you feel, not as something rational or as an attempt to grow or train your own skills.

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2. Discard sadness and melancholy. Life is kind, it has a few days and only now we have to enjoy it

This phrase tells us that we should take advantage of our life, despite the fact that sometimes we can feel pain.

3. As I have not worried about being born, I don't worry about dying

We do not control when we are going to die or how long we will live, so we do not have to obsess about it but about living.

4. Luck comes to those who least wait for it

Often times, things happen when one least looks for and expects them.

5. Only the mystery makes us live. Just the mystery

The mysterious, the unknown, is what drives us to seek, to be curious, and to get excited about life.

6. The most terrible of all feelings is the feeling of having dead hope

Hopelessness makes us feel that nothing we do is going to make sense, depriving us of the desire to fight to achieve our dreams.

7. He who wants to scratch the moon will scratch his heart

It expresses the need to take risks, to learn to lose, to feel pain, if we want to achieve our dreams.

8. I feel my chest full of little hearts, like bells

This phrase shows what the emotion, the nervousness and the joy that implies feeling illusion with something or someone.

9. I don't think any artist works in a fever state

The artist is not a patient or someone who depends on sudden outbursts of genius, but someone who is capable of expressing what he carries within him in a coherent and beautiful way.

10. Books! Books! Here is a magic word that is equivalent to saying "love, love", and that the peoples had to ask as they ask for bread

Culture is essential for Lorca, since it allows human beings to learn and develop.

11. I want to cry because she feels like it

Crying, expressing your own feelings, is something positive that frees us and allows us to overcome things.

12. The woman was not born for her to understand her, but for her to love her

What we should do is not pretend to know and understand everything about others, but to love them.

13. The famous man has the bitterness of having his chest cold and pierced by deaf lanterns directed over them by others.

Fame means that others notice what you do, criticize you and focus their gaze on you, which can be painful for those who have it.

14. Silence and burn is the greatest punishment we can take on ourselves

Part of the work "Blood Wedding" expresses that silence can cause deep suffering in those who maintain it.

15. Poetry is the union of two words that one never supposed could come together and that form something like a mystery

Poetry is something unique, in that a work is formed from what one feels, often ignoring what it means.

16. Waiting, the knot unravels and the fruit ripens

Time makes us grow and learn, as well as achieve our goals if we act to achieve them.

17. Loneliness is the great carver of the spirit

Although loneliness can be painful, it makes us learn what and how we are, as well as reflect on what we want.

18. And even if you did not love me, I would love you for your gloomy look, as the lark wants the new day just for the dew

Unrequited love causes a lot of suffering, but being unrequited will not make you stop loving and admiring that person.

19. On the flag of freedom I embroidered the greatest love of my life

Loving and being free are two concepts that go hand in hand, mutually influencing and stimulating each other.

20. Theater is poetry that leaves the book to become human. And when she becomes human she speaks and screams, cries and despairs

A great playwright, Lorca believed that theater allows us to express in a lively and direct way the nucleus of what art means: the expression of our being.

21. Green I want you green. Green wind. Green branches. The ship on the sea and the horse on the mountain

Nature was also a source of inspiration for Lorca.

22. Look to the right and to the left of time and may your heart learn to be calm

This phrase expresses the need to focus on the present, being able to look to the past or the future without feeling nostalgic for the first or anxiety about the second.

23. Harmony made flesh, you are the great summary of the lyrical. In you melancholy sleeps, the secret of the kiss and the cry

This phrase expresses the feelings aroused by the loved one, and what it inspires in one's being.

24. The physical, biological, natural agony of a body due to hunger, thirst or cold lasts for a short time, very little. But the agony of the unsatisfied soul lasts a lifetime

Lorca expresses the need to live our life as we want to do it, being important to feel satisfied with what we do with the little time we have.

25. Because you believe that time heals and that the walls cover, and it is not true, it is not true.

There are pains that do not pass over time nor can they be hidden, but must be expressed and worked on if we want to overcome them

26. Our ideal does not reach the stars: it is serene, simple. We would like to make honey like bees, or have a sweet voice or a loud cry, or easy walk on the herbs or breasts where our children suck

This phrase speaks of expectations and desires, of what we would like to become.

27. There are things enclosed within the walls that, if they suddenly went out onto the street and shouted, they would fill the world

We tend to hide and hide many feelings, sensations and thoughts, usually being more what is hidden than what is expressed.

28. Translation destroys the spirit of the language

The language in which each one expresses itself contains to a large extent part of the nature of the message that is transmitted. Trying to translate it alters it.

29. Singing trees are cut down and dried up. And the serene mountains become plains. But the song of the water is an eternal thing

Time passes for everyone, but some things remain. Like dreams and ideas.

30. I am not a man, nor a poet, nor a leaf, but a wounded pulse that senses the afterlife

We are beings with impulses and feelings that must be free to express themselves and relate to the world.

31. In an ark of kisses from mouths already closed, it is eternal captive, of the heart sister

This phrase tells us about melancholy, generated by the memory of love lived in the past and lost.

32. History is not only verified in poetry but, thanks to it, it is condensed, acquires a meaning, creates images and symbols in which Americans recognize themselves.

Poetry allows us to express what people think, feel and live, being part of history and allowing us to be free.

33. To whom you tell the secret you give your freedom

Trust is something very precious, since whoever trusts risks part of his being. It must be respected and worked to be worthy of it.

34. The first kiss that tasted like a kiss and was for my lips children like fresh rain

The author recalls the emotion and sensations of kissing someone you love.

35. Nothing disturbs the past centuries. We can't tear a sigh from the old

The past has already passed. We must focus on changing what we can change, the present and the future.

36. Having a child is not having a bouquet of roses

Children are not a mere complement or something that only supposes joys. They are little people that you need to take care of, which means a great responsibility.

37. Poetic creation is an indecipherable mystery, like the mystery of the birth of man. Voices are heard, it is not known where from, and it is useless to worry about where they come from

Phrases that tell us about inspiration, as something that should not try to reason but rather seeks to express itself without further ado.

38. There is childish sweetness in the still morning

Stillness and silence can convey a deep sense of peace and joy, showing us a world in which to act and discover.

39. A clear repose and there our kisses, sonorous polka dots of the echo, would open far away. And your warm heart, nothing more

Again, this phrase reflects love and passion as a force that makes us feel alive.

40. The night does not want to come so that you do not come, nor can I go. But I'll go, even if a scorpion sun eats my temple

We must fight for our love, even if everything seems to go against it.

41. When the moon rises, the bells are lost and the impenetrable paths appear. When the moon rises, the sea covers the land and the heart feels like an island in infinity

The author makes us see the night as a moment of inspiration and as a moment in which dreams arise. That moment when we stop acting with reason to move to the heart.

42. Peoples are books. The Lying Newspaper Cities

Criticism of falsehood, hypocrisy and the need to give a good image typical of the modern and urban world, which make us unable to observe the truth of things.

43. The two elements that the traveler captures in the big city are extrahuman architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and distress

As in the previous sentence, it is expressed that in the city there is a tendency to have a stressful and not very human attitude towards life.

44. So fill my madness with words or let me live in my serene night of the soul, forever dark

Human interaction is something fundamental, which can lead us to do great things or completely destroy us. In this sentence we are talking about love, the need for contact with the one you love.

45. There are souls that one wants to look out, like a window full of sun

Some people awaken in us the need and desire to get closer to them, which generate confidence and inspire us.

46. The language of the town puts the verses in diminutive. Nothing so inviting for confidence and love

The author expresses the beauty that natural language contains, awakening feelings of closeness between the speakers.

47. What work it costs us to cross the thresholds of all doors!

Small part of his poem "Secrets", reflects the difficulty of crossing the barriers that we put ourselves and those that others put so that we know the truth about them.

48. Hey, my son, the silence. It is an undulating silence, a silence where valleys and echoes slip and that inclines the foreheads towards the ground

Silence is not blank or empty, it is full of meaning.

49. Every minute, every person, every attitude can be the germ of a dramatic play. Each creature that we meet goes through its life through different dramatic climates, in infinite combination until its last scene in which it lies down to die.

Every being has its history, living its life and experiencing great moments of both happiness and sadness.

50. The snow of the soul has flakes of kisses and scenes that sank in the shadow or in the light of the one who thinks them

In this sentence Lorca tells us about the memory and desire for someone we love, and how it has affected us.

51. Don't look at me anymore! If you want I will give you my eyes, which are fresh, and my back so that you can fix the hump you have

Envy is the subject of this phrase, expressing the desire and the continuous rumination and observation of the envious regarding what is envied and the one who possesses it.

52. If hope is extinguished and Babel begins, what torch will illuminate the roads on Earth?

This phrase refers to hopelessness and the lack of communication and understanding with our fellow men, and the pain that it can cause.

53. Life in the cemetery is so sad! Frog, start your singing!

Fragment of the poem "The diamond", expresses a feeling of anguish, sadness and uneasiness regarding what may be to come.

54. I want to sleep for a while, a while, a minute, a century; but let everyone know that I have not died; that there is a stable of gold on my lips; that I am a little friend of the west wind; that I am the immense shadow of my tears

Reflection of the feeling of tiredness, of the desire to rest and sink into oblivion of pain without completely disappearing.

55. But two has never been a number because it is an anguish and its shadow

Lorca expresses in this verse that it is not easy to be two, especially when one of the parties only limits himself to projecting onto the other his fear or his fear of not being enough by himself in the form of a dependency or codependency. To love, and to be really two, means to be two independent beings even though we are linked by our feelings.

56. You will never understand what I love you, because you sleep in me and you are asleep. I hide you crying, pursued by a voice of piercing steel

These verses refer to the love that is silent and the pain it causes in those who do not communicate it.

57. Autumn will come with conches, fog grapes and clustered mountains, but no one will want to look into your eyes, because you have died forever

Verse from the poem "Alma absent", reflects with sadness that the one who dies will never feel or live what happens in the world.

58. We must give the perfume that our souls contain! You have to be all songs, all light and goodness. We must open ourselves completely in front of the black night, so that we fill ourselves with the immortal dew!

Despite pain and suffering, we must do everything we can to make the world a better place.

59. What matters most to me is living

The author expresses that what is most important is to make our life the way we want it, fighting to achieve our dreams without letting ourselves be constrained by fear.

60. Heart. Why do you send me, if I don't want to?

Love is not a rational thing. We do not choose who we fall in love with, or why. It simply arises.