Pablo Neruda Men Quotations

A child who does not play is not a child, but the man who doesn't play has lost forever the child who lived in him and who he will miss terribly.

A book, a book full of human touches, of shirts, a book without loneliness, with men and tools, a book is victory.

How much does a man live, after all?/ Does he live a thousand days, or one only? For a week, or for several centuries?/ How long does a man spend dying?/ What does it mean to say 'for ever'?

...the best poet is the man who delivers our daily bread: the local baker....

Death arrives among all that sound like a shoe with no foot in it, like a suit with no man in it, comes and knocks, using a ring with no stone in it, with no finger in it, comes and shouts with no mouth, with no tongue,with no throat. Nevertheless its steps can be heard and its clothing makes a hushed sound, like a tree.

Writing poetry, we live among the wild beasts, and when we touch a man, the stuff of someone in whom we believed, and he goes to pieces like a rotten pie, you... gather together whatever can be salvaged, while I cup my hands around the live coal of life.

I am not jealous of what came before me. Come with a man on your shoulders, come with a hundred men in your hair, come with a thousand men between your breasts and your feet, come like a river full of drowned men which flows down to the wild sea, to the eternal surf, to Time! Bring them all to where I am waiting for you; we shall always be alone, we shall always be you and I alone on earth, to start our life!

I learned about life from life itself, love I learned in a single kiss and could teach no one anything except that I have lived with something in common among men.

I believed that the way passed through Man, and that it was from there that destiny had to emerge.