To be able to speak, listen, and understand the language of love is a greater education than any degree.

True education should focus on the whole person, nurturing both the mind and the heart.

Love is not a reward; it is a responsibility.

What the soul is to the body, so is the artist to his people.

Let the radiance of my enthusiasms envelop the poor courtyard and the bare classroom. Let my heart be a stronger column and my goodwill purer gold than the columns and gold of rich schools.

Writing tends to cheer me; it always soothes my spirit and blesses me with the gift of an innocent, tender, childlike day. It is the sensation of having spent a few hours in my homeland, with my customs, free whims, my total freedom.

My grief and my smile begin in your face, my son.

For me, religiosity is … the constant remembrance of the presence of the soul.

In the secret of night, my prayer climbs like the liana, My prayer is, and I am not. It grows, and I perish. I have only my hard breath, my reason and my madness. I cling to the vine of my prayer. I tend it at the root of the stalk of night.

Now I am nothing but a veil; all my body is a veil beneath which a child sleeps.

Let the earth look at me, and bless me, for now I am fecund and sacred, like the palms and the furrows.

There are kisses that leave traces on the lips like sunshine between ice.

Poetry simply exists within me, and on my lap; it is the thirst of a submerged childhood. Although the result is bitter and hard, the poetry I make cleanses me of the world’s dust and even the inscrutable, essential vileness similar to what we call original sin.

Education is, perhaps, the highest form of searching for God.

Give me your hand and we’ll dance; give me your hands and love me. Like one flower we’ll be, and nothing else.

I have a day. If I know how to make the most of it, I have a treasure.

There is the joy of being healthy and fair, but there is overall the beauty, the immense joy of being useful.

All night I have suffered; all night my flesh has trembled to bring forth its gift. The sweat of death is on my forehead; but it is not death, it is life!

I have all that I lost and I go carrying my childhood like a favorite flower that perfumes my hand.

I have a faithful joy and a joy that is lost. One is like a rose, the other, a thorn. The one that was stolen I have not lost.

The poet is an untier of knots, and love without words is a knot, and it drowns.

Now my belly is as noble as my heart.

The gods give, like twin flowers,
power and ruin, memory and oblivion.

Everyone left and we have remained
on a path that goes on without us.

Because she—you hear her—she’s calling,
and is always going to call, and it’s better
both of us die by the dagger without anyone
seeing us, Orestes, and die a fit death.

I am Cassandra—she who, without asking,
understood it all and still came to her fate,
I, Cassandra, full of visions,
who sees her own death without turning away,
and hears in the night the day that follows.

Love that stammers, that stutters, is apt to be the love that loves best.

Love beauty it is the shadow of God on the universe.

Speech is our second possession, after the soul-and perhaps we have no other possession in this world.

We are guilty of many errors and many faults, But our worst crime is abandoning the children, Neglecting the fountain of life. Many of the things we need can wait. The child cannot. Right now is the time his bones are being formed, His blood is being made, And his senses are being developed. To him we cannot answer ‘Tomorrow.’ His name is ‘Today.’

Many things can wait. Children cannot. Today their bones are being formed, their blood is being made, their senses are being developed. To them we cannot say “tomorrow.” Their name is today.

You shall create beauty not to excite the senses but to give sustenance to the soul.