The best 20 phrases of Pedro Salinas (and verses)

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 had great success in his time, and the passage of time has only increased his figure, worthy of study and analysis in academic and literary circles throughout the Spanish-speaking world.

• Related article: "25 famous quotes by Francisco de Quevedo"

Famous quotes from Pedro Salinas

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

In this article we are going to remember this great writer by means of a compilation of the best phrases of Pedro Salinas.

1. You always live in your actions. With the tips of your fingers you press the world, you tear off auroras, triumphs, colors, joys: it's your music. Life is what you touch.

A sample of his poetic brilliance.

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

Literature always illuminates what monotony is silent.

3. Now I love you, as the sea loves its water: from outside, from above, making itself nonstop with it storms, leaks, shelters, breaks, calms.

A romantic reflection on love runaway.

4. What you are distracts me from what you say.

A beautiful thought that dislocates what we really are with what we verbalize. Since the latter, after all, it's just the way we show ourselves outside.

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

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

6. And you never made a mistake, more than once, a night that infatuated you with a shadow, the only one that you liked. A shadow seemed. And you wanted to hug her. And it was me.

On the sentimental errors and their ephemeral aspect.

7. You always live in your acts. With the tips of your fingers you press the world, you tear off auroras, triumphs, colors, joys: it's your music. Life is what you touch.

Portrait of a pure soul.

8. When you chose me - love chose - I came out of the great anonymous of all, out of nothing.

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

9. And while they keep going round and round, surrendering, deceiving themselves, your faces, your whims and your kisses, your fickle delights, your quick contacts with the world, having come to the pure, immobile center of yourself, and see how you change, and you call it living, in everything, in everything, yes, less in me, where you survive.

Beautiful poem to free interpretation of each reader.

10. Within man neither hope pushes nor subject memory.

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

11. I kissed you on the lips. Dense, red. It was such a short kiss, that it lasted more than a lightning, that a miracle, more. The time after giving it to you I did not want it at all anymore, I had not wanted anything before.

On the intensity and frugality of a kiss.

12. I do not trust the paper rose, so many times that I made it with my hands. I do not trust the other true rose, daughter of the sun and seasoning, the bride of the wind. Of you that I never did to you, of you that never made you, of you I trust, round sure random.

Another example of his poetic and creative virtuosity.

13. This night they cross green, red, blue, very fast strange lights through your eyes. Will it be your soul?

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

14. I love you so innocent, all alien, throbbing in what is outside of you, your eyes proclaiming the vivid truths of colors 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 her again, and by the sky, by the sea, by time, I will see how she goes to her fate. If your fate is me, it is waiting for you.

An ode to free love, in a complicated time.

17. Never words, hugs, they will tell me that you existed, that you loved me: Never. They tell me white sheets, maps, omens, telephones; you do not. And I'm hugging you without asking you, afraid it's not true that you live and love me. And I am embraced to you without looking and without touching you. It is not going to be that I discover with questions, with caresses, that immense solitude of wanting only me.

One of those phrases of heartbreak that can come to freeze the blood.

18. At night and late night, and love and transamor, already changed in final horizons, you and me, of ourselves.

Romantic verse that awakens the conscience.

19. Is that I want to get out of you your best you. That one that you did not see and that I see, swimmer for your bottom, very precious.

An incessant search to connect souls. Great reflection of Pedro Salinas.

20. Every perfect kiss separates time, throws it back, widens the short world where you can still kiss ...

Another of his perfect verses.