Antonio Porchia Quotes

I know what I have given you ... I do not know what you have received.

My final belief is suffering. And I begin to believe that I do not suffer.

More grievous than tears is the sight of them.

My poverty is not complete: it lacks me.

I can wait for you longer. Because you have arrived.

Infancy is what is eternal, and the rest, all the rest, is brevity, extreme brevity.

I would go to heaven, but I would take my hell; I would not go alone

When I die, I will not see myself die, for the first time.

And if you find everything as soon as you look for it, you find it in vain, you look for it in vain.

When I do not walk in the clouds I walk as though I were lost.

Human suffering, while it is asleep, is shapeless. If it is wakened it takes the form of the waker.

They will say you are on the wrong road, if it is your own.

Truth has very few friends and those few are suicides.

The fear of separation is all that unites.

What words say does not last. The words last. Because words are always the same, and what they say is never the same.

In a full heart there is room for everything, and in an empty heart there is room for nothing.

No one is a light unto himself, not even the sun.

If you do not raise your eyes you will think you are the highest point.

When I break any of the chains that bind me I feel that I make myself smaller.

A little candor never leaves me. It is what protects me.

I began my comedy as its only actor and I come to the end as its only spectator.

He who does not know how to believe, should not know.

I keep my hands empty for the sake of what I have had in them.

When you made me into another, I left you with me.

My heaviness comes from the heights.

I have abandoned the beggarly necessity of living. I live without it.

Flowers are without hope. Because hope is tomorrow and flowers have no tomorrow.

You are a puppet, but in the hands of the infinite, which may be your own.

They have stopped deceiving you, not loving you. And it seems to you that they have stopped loving you.

A large heart can be filled with very little.

He who has seen everything empty itself is close to knowing what everything is filled with.

You can owe nothing, if you give back its light to the sun.

Those who gave away their wings are sad not to see them fly.

I stop wanting what I am looking for, looking for it.

I am in myself so little that what they do with me scarcely interests me.

There are sufferings that have lost their memory and do not remember why they are suffering.

It's been a long time since I asked anything of heaven, and my arms still haven't come down.

Many things, In order to assure me their lack of existence; become mine

My great day came and went, I do not know how. Because it did not pass through dawn when it came, nor through dusk when it went.

Whatever I take, I take too much or too little; I do not take the exact amount. The exact amount is no use to me.

He who does not fill his world with phantoms remains alone.

A door opens to me. I go in and am faced with a hundred closed doors.

All the suns labor to kindle your flame and a microbe puts it out.

I have come one step away from everything.
And here I stay, far from everything,
one step away.

That in man which cannot be domesticated is not his evil but his goodness.

Night is a world lit by itself.

The real "it is well" is something I say from the ground, having fallen.

You do not see the river of mourning because it lacks one tear of your own.

Injury, when it is slight, upsets me; when it is strong it calms me.

As long as we thing we are worth something, we wrong ourselves.

Sometimes at night I light a lamp so as not to see.

Everything that I bear within me bound, is to be found somewhere else free.

You are sad because they abandon you and you have not fallen.

Nothing is not only nothing.
It is also our prison.

Out of a hundred years a few minutes were made that stayed with me, not a hundred years.

Set out from any point. They are all alike. They all lead to a point of departure.

Without this ridiculous vanity that takes the form of self-display, and is part of everything and everyone, we would see nothing, and nothing would exist.

You are fastened to them and cannot understand how, because they are not fastened to you.

A hundred men together are the hundredth part of a man.

God has given a great deal to man, but man would like something from man.

Some things become such a part of us that we forget them.

Beyond my body my veins are invisible.

I believe that the soul consists of its sufferings. For the soul that cures its own sufferings dies.

If you are good to this one and that one, this one and that one will say that you are good. If you are good to everyone, no one will say that you are good.

A thing, until it is everything, is noise, and once it is everything it is silence.

I have scarcely touched the sky and I am made of it.

He who makes a paradise of his bread makes a hell of his hunger.

You know so much about me and yet you don't understand me. To know is not to understand. We could know everything and still not understand anything.

Yes, this is what good is: to forgive evil. There is no other good.

We have a world for each one, but we do not have a world for all.

The chains that bind us the most closely are the ones we have broken.

Not using faults does not mean that one does not have them.

You think you are killing me. I think you are committing suicide.

When the superficial wearies me, it wearies me so much that I need an abyss in order to rest.

Even the smallest of creatures carries the sun in its eyes.

We become aware of the void as we fill it.

When I look for my existence I do not look for it in myself.

Man, when he does not grieve, hardly exists.

The less you think you are, the more you bear. And if you think you are nothing, you bear everything.

Only the wound speaks its own word.

If those who owe us nothing gave us nothing, how poor we would be.

What do others think they see?

Situated in some nebulous distance I do what I do so that the universal balance of which I am a part may remain a balance.

Humanity does not know where to go because no one is waiting for it: not even God.

If only I could leave everything as it is, without moving a single star or a single cloud. Oh, if only I could!

He who holds me by a thread is not strong; the thread is strong.

My father, when he went, made my childhood a gift of a half a century.

Not believing has a sickness which is believing a little.

The shadows: some hide, others reveal.

When everything is finished, the mornings are sad.

The less a creature thinks he is, the more he bears. And if he thinks he is nothing, he bears everything.

I have been my own disciple and my own master. And I have been a good disciple but a bad master.

We tear life out of life to use it for looking at itself.