60 great sentences by Federico García Lorca

The name of Federico García Lorca is widely known in 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 countless phrases and reflections to remember on various subjects.

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

Sixty great sentences by Federico García Lorca

Here we leave you with about sixty phrases by Lorca, which speak of themes such as love, hope, destiny and art, all of which are frequent elements in his work.

1. Poetry doesn’t 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 mediate or train one’s skills.

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

This phrase tells us that we should take advantage of our life, even though we may sometimes feel pain.

3. Since I haven’t worried about being born, I don’t worry about dying

We don’t control when we will die or how long we will live, so we don’t have to obsess about it, but about living.

4. Luck comes to those who least expect it

Often, things happen when you least look for them and expect them.

5. Only mystery makes us live. Only the mystery

The mysterious, the unknown, is what drives us to seek, to be curious and to be moved by life.

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

Hopelessness makes us feel that nothing we do will make sense, depriving us of the will to fight for 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 emotion, nervousness and joy are involved in being excited about something or someone.

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

The artist is not a sick person or someone who depends on sudden bursts of genius, but someone who is capable of expressing what he carries inside him in a coherent and beautiful way.

10. Books! Books! Here is a magic word that is the equivalent of saying “love, love,” and that the people should ask for as they ask for bread

Culture is something primordial for Lorca, since it allows the human being to learn and develop.

11. I want to cry because I feel like it

Crying, expressing one’s feelings, is something positive that frees us and allows us to overcome things.

12. A woman is not born to be understood, but to be loved

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 that lead others over them

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

14. Shutting up and burning is the greatest punishment we can take

Part of the work “Blood Wedding”, expresses that the silence can cause a deep suffering in the one who maintains 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 which a work is formed from what one feels, often ignoring what it means.

16. Waiting, the knot falls apart 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 it can be painful, loneliness makes us learn what and how we are, as well as reflect on what we want.

18. And though you would not love me, I would love you for your sombre gaze, as the lark wants the new day only for the dew

Unrequited love causes much suffering, but unrequited love will not stop you from 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, influencing and stimulating each other.

20. Theatre is poetry that goes out of the book to become human. And by becoming human, it speaks and screams, cries and despairs

Great playwright, Lorca considered that the theatre allows to express in a lively and direct way the core of what art means: the expression of our being.

21. Green I want you green. Wind green. Green branches. The boat on the sea and the horse on the mountain

Nature was also a source of inspiration for Lorca.

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

This phrase expresses the need to focus on the present, being able to look at the past and the future without feeling nostalgia for the former or anxiety about the latter.

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

This phrase expresses the feelings awakened by the loved one, and what he or she inspires in one’s own being.

24. The physical, biological, natural agony of a body from hunger, thirst or cold is short lived, very short lived. But the agony of the unsatisfied soul lasts a lifetime

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

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

There are pains that do not pass with time and cannot be hidden, but must be expressed and worked on if we are 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 loud cry, or easily walk on the grass 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 came out and shouted, would fill the world

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

28. Translation shatters the spirit of language

The language in which each is expressed contains to a large extent part of the nature of the message being conveyed. Attempting to translate it alters it.

29. The singing trees are cut down and dried. 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 beyond

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

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

This phrase speaks to us of the 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 condenses, acquires a sense, creates images and the symbols in which Americans recognize themselves

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

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

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

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

The author recalls the emotion and feelings that come from kissing someone you love.

35. Nothing disturbs the past centuries. We cannot tear out a sigh of 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 brings joy. They are small people who need to be taken care of, and therefore they carry a great responsibility.

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

Phrases that speak to us of inspiration, as something that should not try to be reasoned with but seeks to express itself without further ado.

38. There is childlike sweetness in the quiet morning

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

39. A clear rest and there our kisses, sonorous moles of the echo, would open up far away. And your warm heart, nothing else

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

40. The night doesn’t want to come so you can’t come, and I can’t come. But I will go, even if a scorpion sun eats my temple

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

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

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

42. People are books. Cities are lying newspapers

It criticizes the 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 Anxiety

As in the previous sentence, it is expressed that in the city there is a tendency to have an attitude towards stressful and unhuman life.

44. 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 destroy us completely. In this sentence we are talking about love, the need for contact with the one we love.

45. There are souls to whom one feels like looking out, like a window full of sunshine

Some people awaken in us the need and the desire to approach them, which generates confidence and inspires us.

46. The language of the people puts the verses in diminutive. Nothing so inciting to confidence and love

The author expresses the beauty of natural language, awakening feelings of closeness among speakers.

47. How hard it is for us to cross the thresholds of all doors!

A small part of his poem “Secrets”, reflects the difficulty of breaking through the barriers we put up ourselves and those that others put up so that we know the truth about them.

48. Hey, my son, the silence. It is a wavy silence, a silence where valleys and echoes slide and that tilts the fronts towards the ground

Silence is not something inexpressive or empty, but full of meaning.

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

Every being has a story, living his life and experiencing great moments of both happiness and sadness.

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

In this sentence Lorca talks about the memory and desire for someone loved, and how this has affected us.

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

Envy is the subject of this sentence, expressing the desire and the continuous rumination and observation of the envious with respect to the envied and the one who possesses it.

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

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

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

Fragment of the poem “The Diamond”, expresses a sense of anguish, sadness and uneasiness about what may be to come.

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

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

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 projects on the other his fear or his fear of not being enough by himself in the form of a dependency or co-dependency. To love, and to be really two, means to be two independent beings even if 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 love that is silent and the pain it causes in those who do not communicate it.

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

Verse of the poem “Absent Soul”, reflects with sadness that the one who dies will not feel again nor live what happens in the world.

58. We must give the perfume that our souls contain! It is necessary to be all songs, all light and goodness. It is necessary to open ourselves completely before the black night, so that we may be filled with the immortal dew!

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

59. What matters most to me is to live

The author expresses that what is most important is to make our life as we want it, fighting to achieve our dreams without being constrained by fear.

60. Sweetheart. Why do you rule me, if I don’t want to?

Love is not a rational thing. We don’t choose who we fall in love with, or why. It just comes up.