Pedro Salinas (Madrid 1891 – Boston 1951) was one of the most acclaimed and remembered Spanish writers of the so-called Generation of 27.

His essays and poetic works were very successful already in his time, and the passing of the years has only increased his figure, worthy of study and analysis in academic and literary circles throughout the Spanish-speaking world.

Famous phrases of Pedro Salinas

Exiled to the United States after the Spanish Civil War because of his republicanist views, he lived in his own flesh the bitterness of the war and dedicated many of his verses and writings to this event.

In this article we will remember this great writer through a compilation of the best phrases of Pedro Salinas.

1. You always live in your acts. With the tip of your fingers you pulse the world, you bring forth dawn, triumphs, colours, joys: it is your music. Life is what you play.

A sample of his poetic brilliance.

2. In this light of the poem, everything, from the most nocturnal kiss to the zenith of splendor, is much clearer.

Literature always illuminates what monotony does not.

3. Now I love you, as the sea loves its water: from the outside, from above, making non-stop storms, leaks, shelters, rests, calms.

A romantic reflection on runaway love.

4. What you are distracts me from what you’re saying.

A beautiful thought that dislocates who we really are with what we verbalize. Since the latter, in the end, is only the way we show ourselves to the outside world.

5. There was no need to look: your dream was my dream.

Sharing wishes and desires is the most poetic way of saying I love you.

6. And you were never wrong, more than once, one night you were infatuated by a shadow, the only one you ever liked. A shadow it seemed. And you wanted to embrace it. And it was me.

About sentimental errors and their ephemeral nature.

7. You always live in your acts. With the tip of your fingers, you touch the world, you bring out the dawn, the triumphs, the colours, the joys: it is your music. Life is what you play.

Portrait of a pure soul.

8. When you chose me – love chose – I came out of the great anonymity of all, out of nowhere.

This verse by Pedro Salinas portrays the warmth felt by the loved one.

9. And while you continue to go around and around, giving yourselves away, deceiving yourselves, your faces, your whims and your kisses, your fickle delights, your quick contacts with the world, I have reached the pure, immobile center of you, and see you change, and you call it living, in everything, in everything if, except in me, where you survive.

Beautiful poem to be freely interpreted by each reader.

10. Within man neither hope pushes nor memory holds.

One of those philosophical phrases that has been the subject of debate and analysis by Spanish and foreign literates.

11. I kissed you on the lips. Dense, red. It was a kiss so short, it lasted longer than lightning, than a miracle, longer. The time after I gave it to you I didn’t want it at all anymore, I hadn’t wanted it at all before.

About the intensity and frugality of a kiss.

12. I don’t trust the paper rose, so many times I made it with my hands. Nor do I trust the other true rose, the daughter of the sun and seasoning, the bride of the wind. You who never made you, you who never made you, you I trust, round sure chance.

Another example of his poetic and creative virtuosity.

13. Tonight you are crossed by green, red, blue, very fast strange lights in your eyes. Is it your soul?

The enjoyment of the present moment is not so much in what happens outside, but in what we feel subjectively.

14. I want you thus, innocent, all alien, throbbing in what is outside of you, your eyes proclaiming the vivid colored truths of the night.

A phrase of Pedro Salinas that challenges a pure and noble love.

15. I know that when I call you among all the people of the world, only you will be you.

Even with a life full of comings and goings, Salinas retained the illusion of pure and transcendent love.

16. I have no prison for you in my being. Your freedom keeps you for me. I will release you again, and through the sky, through the sea, through time, I will see you go to your fate. If her fate is me, she’s waiting for you.

An ode to free love, in a difficult time.

17. Never will words, hugs, tell me that you existed, that you loved me: Never. White sheets, maps, omens, telephones tell me that; you do not. And I am embracing you without asking you, afraid that it is not true that you live and love me. And I’m holding you without looking or touching you. I will not discover with questions, with caresses, that immense loneliness of loving you only me.

One of those loveless phrases that can make your blood run cold.

18. In the night and the late night, and the love and the transamor, already changed in final horizons, you and I, of ourselves.

Romantic conscience-awakening verse.

19. I just want to bring out the best in you. That you did not see and I see, swimmer by your bottom, beautiful.

A relentless quest to connect souls. Great reflection by Pedro Salinas.

20. Every perfect kiss sets time aside, pushes you back, widens the brief world where you can still kiss…

Another one of his perfect verses.