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Leonard Cohen Quotes

Canadian singer-songwriter and poet (b. 1934), Birth: 21-9-1934, Death: 7-11-2016 Leonard Cohen Quotes
1.
There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.
Leonard Cohen

There is a fissure in everything, that's how the illumination penetrates.
2.
We are not mad. We are human.We want to love, and someone must forgive us for the paths we take to love, for the paths are many and dark, and we are ardent and cruel in our journey.
Leonard Cohen

'We are not insane. We are people. We seek to love, and someone must absolve us for the routes we traverse to reach it, for the roads are numerous and murky, and we are fervent and harsh in our expedition.'
3.
I don't consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel soaked to the skin.
Leonard Cohen

I don't view myself as a cynic. To me, a cynic is someone who expects the worst. And I'm drenched to the core.
4.
I greet you from the other side of sorrow and despair, with a love so vast and shattered it will reach you everywhere.
Leonard Cohen

I welcome you from the depths of mourning and desolation, with a boundless and splintered affection that will touch your heart in every corner.
5.
I wish I could say everything in one word. I hate all the things that can happen between the beginning of a sentence and the end.
Leonard Cohen

I desire to succinctly express all that I'm thinking; yet, so much can be misunderstood amidst the words of a phrase.
Similar Authors: Ralph Waldo Emerson William Shakespeare C. S. Lewis Rumi Samuel Johnson George Herbert George Eliot Maya Angelou Taylor Swift Henry Rollins Horace Bob Dylan John Milton Ovid Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
6.
We are so lightly here. It is in love that we are made. In love we disappear.
Leonard Cohen

'Our presence is fragile. It is through affection that we exist. Affection brings us to nothingness.'
7.
May you be surrounded by friends and family, and if this is not your lot, may the blessings find you in your solitude.
Leonard Cohen

May you be blessed with companionship and kinship, and if such fortune eludes you, may the graces come to you in your loneliness.
8.
We are so small between the stars, so large against the sky.
Leonard Cohen

We are diminutive amidst the galaxies, yet immense against the heavens.
Quote Topics by Leonard Cohen: Song Men Thinking Heart People Writing Morning Light Night Love Spiritual Life Dream Want Long Children Knows Loneliness Sky Kind Real Eye Hands Pain Two Soul War Passion Reality Hair
9.
It's the notion that there is no perfection - that there is a broken world and we live with broken hearts and broken lives but still there is no alibi for anything. On the contrary, you have to stand up and say hallelujah under those circumstances.
Leonard Cohen

10.
You live your life as if it's real.......a thousand kisses deep
Leonard Cohen

11.
Reality is one of the possibilities I cannot afford to ignore
Leonard Cohen

12.
Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free!!
Leonard Cohen

13.
When things get really bad, just raise your glass and stamp your feet and do a little jig. That's about all you can do.
Leonard Cohen

14.
When we are touched by a song, it is because the artist cannot hide himself.
Leonard Cohen

15.
To keep our hearts open is probably the most urgent responsibility you have as you get older.
Leonard Cohen

16.
How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me?
Leonard Cohen

17.
I don't really understand that process called reincarnation but if there is such a thing I'd like to come back as my daughter's dog.
Leonard Cohen

18.
a kite is a victim you are sure of. you love it because it pulls.
Leonard Cohen

19.
Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove Dance me to the end of love
Leonard Cohen

20.
Never make a decision when you need to pee.
Leonard Cohen

21.
The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.
Leonard Cohen

22.
Fare thee well my nightingale, I lived but to be near you. Thow you are singing somewhere still I can no longer hear you.
Leonard Cohen

23.
Avoid the flourish. Do not be afraid to be weak. Do not be ashamed to be tired. You look good when you’re tired. You look like you could go on forever. Now come into my arms. You are the image of my beauty .
Leonard Cohen

24.
I'd written a lot of songs with hummingbirds in them. None of them ever came to anything, but I did write a few lines last month. It went like this: 'Listen to the hummingbird whose wings you cannot see. Listen to the hummingbird, don't listen to me'.
Leonard Cohen

25.
I cannot understand why my arm is not a lilac tree.
Leonard Cohen

26.
I’ve seen the nations rise and fall. I’ve heard their stories, heard them all, but love’s the only engine of survival.
Leonard Cohen

27.
The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and it's overturned the order of the soul.
Leonard Cohen

28.
I always loved those little creatures [hummingbird], always feel blessed when they appear nearby. There's a magical quality to them. I finally put one in a song.
Leonard Cohen

29.
At the very center of our culture is a crucified man, a tortured man hanging on a cross of wood. You have an image of violence at the very center of our spiritual investigation.
Leonard Cohen

30.
And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook, with the photographs there and the moths.
Leonard Cohen

31.
Seven to eleven is a huge chunk of life, full of dulling and forgetting. It is fabled that we slowly lose the gift of speech with animals, that birds no longer visit our windowsills to converse. As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armor themselves against wonder.
Leonard Cohen

32.
The cutting of the gem has to be finished before you can see whether it shines.
Leonard Cohen

33.
I loved you for a long, long time I know this love is real It don't matter how it all went wrong That don't change the way I feel And I can't believe that time's Gonna heal this wound I'm speaking of There ain't no cure for love
Leonard Cohen

34.
In the broken places, the light shines through.
Leonard Cohen

35.
The older I get, the surer I am that I'm not running the show.
Leonard Cohen

36.
I don't think there's any difference between a crush and profound love. I think the experience is that you dissolve your sentries and your battalions for a moment and you really do see that there is this unfixed free-flowing energy of emotion and thought between people, that it really is there.
Leonard Cohen

37.
Well, you know, there's depression and depression. What I mean by depression in my own case is that depression isn't just the blues. It's not just like I have a hangover in the weekend ... the girl didn't show up or something like that. It isn't that. It's not really depression, it's a kind of mental violence which stops you from functioning properly from one moment to the next. You lose something somewhere and suddenly you're gripped by a kind of angst of the heart and of the spirit.
Leonard Cohen

38.
I speak of a clinical depression that is the background of your entire life, a background of anguish and anxiety, a sense that nothing goes well, that pleasure is unavailable and all your strategies collapse.
Leonard Cohen

39.
Follow me, the wise man said, but he walked behind.
Leonard Cohen

40.
Act the way you'd like to be and soon you'll be the way you act.
Leonard Cohen

41.
Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.
Leonard Cohen

42.
I am an old scholar, better-looking now than when I was young. That's what sitting on your ass does to your face.
Leonard Cohen

43.
It was a dance of masks and every mask was perfect because every mask was a real face and every face was a real mask so there was no mask and there was no face for there was but one dance in which there was but one mask but one true face which was the same and which was a thing without a name which changed and changed into itself over and over.
Leonard Cohen

44.
Hallelujah" "Your faith was strong but you needed proof. You saw her bathing on the roof. Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you. She tied you to a kitchen chair, she broke your throne, and she cut your hair. And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah.
Leonard Cohen

45.
You lose your grip, and then you slip into the Masterpiece.
Leonard Cohen

46.
Your heart opens and of course you're completely panicked because you're used to guarding this organ with your life.
Leonard Cohen

47.
Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.
Leonard Cohen

48.
What is most original in a man's nature is often that which is most desperate. Thus new systems are forced on the world by men who simply cannot bear the pain of living with what is. Creators care nothing for their systems except that they be unique. If Hitler had been born in Nazi Germany he wouldn't have been content to enjoy the atmosphere.
Leonard Cohen

49.
When you stop thinking about yourself all the time, a certain sense of repose overtakes you.
Leonard Cohen

50.
My two great heroes are W. B. Yeats and Federico Garcia Lorca.
Leonard Cohen