Of what’s to come the wise perceive things about to happen. Sometimes during moments of intense study their hearing’s troubled: the hidden sound of things approaching reaches them, and they listen reverently, while in the street outside the people hear nothing whatsoever.

— C.P. Cavafy

C.P. Cavafy Quotes

From all I did and all I said let no one try to find out who I was.

— C.P. Cavafy

One candle is enough. Its gentle light will be more suitable, will be more gracious when the Shades arrive, the Shades of Love.

— C.P. Cavafy

If you are one of the truly elect, be careful how you attain your eminence.

— C.P. Cavafy

Guard, O my soul, against pomp and glory. And if you cannot curb your ambitions, at least pursue them hesitantly, cautiously. And the higher you go, the more searching and careful you need to be.

— C.P. Cavafy

That we’ve broken their statues, that we’ve driven them out of their temples, doesn’t mean at all that the gods are dead. O land of Ionia, they’re still in love with you, their souls still keep your memory.

— C.P. Cavafy

I’m practically broke and homeless. This fatal city, Antioch, has devoured all my money: this fatal city with its extravagant life.

— C.P. Cavafy

And if you can’t shape your life the way you want, at least try as much as you can not to degrade it...

— C.P. Cavafy

And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you. Wise as you have become, with so much experience, you must already have understood what these Ithacas mean.

— C.P. Cavafy

The frivolous can call me frivolous. I’ve always been most punctilious about important things. And I insist that no one knows better than I do the Holy Fathers, or the Scriptures, or the Canons of the Councils.

— C.P. Cavafy

Of what’s to come the wise perceive things about to happen. Sometimes during moments of intense study their hearing’s troubled: the hidden sound of things approaching reaches them, and they listen reverently, while in the street outside the people hear nothing whatsoever.

— C.P. Cavafy

Nero wasn’t worried at all when he heard the utterance of the Delphic Oracle: “Beware the age of seventy-three.” Plenty of time to enjoy himself still. He’s thirty. The deadline the god has given him is quite enough to cope with future dangers.

— C.P. Cavafy

Try to keep them, poet, those erotic visions of yours, however few of them there are that can be stilled. Put them, half-hidden, in your lines.

— C.P. Cavafy

And from this marvellous pan-Hellenic expedition, triumphant, brilliant in every way, celebrated on all sides, glorified incomparable, we emerged: the great new Hellenic world.

— C.P. Cavafy

The days of the future stand in front of us Like a line of candles all alight Golden and warm and lively little candles.

— C.P. Cavafy

Arriving there is what you are destined for.

— C.P. Cavafy

What shall become of us without any barbarians? Those people were a kind of solution.

— C.P. Cavafy

Return often and take me, beloved sensation, return and take me – When memory of the body awakens, and old desire again runs through the blood; when the lips and skin remember, and the hands feel as if they touch again.

— C.P. Cavafy

The holy Cross goes forward; it brings joy and consolation to every quarter where Christians live; and these God-fearing people, elated, stand in their doorways and greet it reverently, the strength, the salvation of the universe, the Cross.

— C.P. Cavafy

My life has been awaiting you. Your footfall was my own heart’s beat.

— C.P. Cavafy

When you set out for Ithaca, ask that your way be long.

— C.P. Cavafy
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