Leonard Cohen Quotes (26 Quotes)



    It's a pity if someone... has to console himself for the wreck of his days with the notion that somehow his voice, his work embodies the deepest, most obscure, freshest, rawest oyster of reality in the unfathomable refrigerator of the heart's ocean, but I am such a one, and there you have it. ... It is really amazing how famous I am to those few who truly comprehend what I'm about. I am the Voice of Suffering and I cannot be consoled.

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

    In dreams the truth is learned that all good works are done in the absence of a caress.

    Any startling piece of work has a subversive element in it, a delicious element often. Subversion is only disagreeable when it manifests in political or social activity.


    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.

    Raise a million filters and the rain will not be clean, until the longing for it be refined in deep confession. And still we hear, If only this nation had a soul, or, Let us change the way we trade, or, Let us be proud of our region.

    This civil action is another case of a tragedy that has become all too familiar in the music industry a business manager and professional advisers exploit an immensely talented artist's loyalty and trust through greed, self-dealing, concealment, knowing misrepresentation and reckless disregard for professional fiduciary duties.

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

    I taught him how to dress. He taught me how to live forever.

    Prayer is translation. A man translates himself into a child asking for all there is in a language he has barely mastered.

    There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.

    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 we are not new, in city and in forest they smiled like me and you, but now it's come to distances and both of us must try, your eyes are soft with sorrow, Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.

    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.

    If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn
    they will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a
    stem.

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

    The term clinical depression finds its way into too many conversations these days. One has a sense that a catastrophe has occurred in the psychic landscape.

    A woman watches her body uneasily, as though it were an unreliable ally in the battle for love.


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

    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.

    Let judges secretly despair of justice: their verdicts will be more acute. Let generals secretly despair of triumph; killing will be defamed. Let priests secretly despair of faith: their compassion will be true.

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

    I have nothing against the Queen of England. Even in my heart I never resented her for not being Jackie Kennedy. She is, to my mind, a very gallant lady, victimized by whoever it is who designs the tops of her uniforms.

    To every people the land is given on condition. Perceived or not, there is a Covenant, beyond the constitution, beyond sovereign guarantee, beyond the nation's sweetest dreams of itself.

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


    More Leonard Cohen Quotations (Based on Topics)


    World - Life - Man - Business & Commerce - Soul - Sense & Perception - Work & Career - Justice - Reality - Actions - England - Poetry - Music - War & Peace - Curiosity - Suffering - Cities - Light - Sleeping - View All Leonard Cohen Quotations

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