Pedro Calderon de la Barca Quotations

Green is the prime color of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises.

These flowers, which were splendid and sprightly, waking in the dawn of the morning, in the evening will be a pitiful frivolity, sleeping in the cold night's arms.

When love is not madness, it is not love.

What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story. And the greatest good is little enough; for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.

One may know how to gain a victory, and know not how to use it.

What law, what reason can deny that gift so sweet, so natural that God has given a stream, a fish, a beast, a bird?

For all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.

A good action is never lost; it is a treasure laid up and guarded for the doer's need.

'Tis not where we lie, but whence we fell; the loss of heaven's the greatest pain in hell.

But whether it be dream or truth, to do well is what matters. If it be truth, for truth's sake. If not, then to gain friends for the time when we awaken.

For even in dreams a good deed is not lost.

To the King, one must give his possessions and his life; but honour is a possession of soul, and the soul is only God's.

Grief has been compared to a hydra; for every one that dies, two are born.

Great events have sent before them their announcements.

The fox is very cunning, but he is more cunning who catches the fox.

All just laws condemn cruelty.

All life is a dream, and all dreams are dreams.

Never confide your secrets to paper; it is like throwing a stone in the air; and if you know who throws the stone, you do not know where it may fall.

A woman needs a stronger head than her own for counsel--she should marry.

They say that the best counsel is that of woman.

And yet, and yet, in these our ghostly lives, Half night, half day, half sleeping, half awake, How if our waking life, like that of sleep, Be all a dream in that eternal life To which we wake not till we sleep in death

Tis not where we lie but whence we fell; the loss of Heaven's the greatest pain in Hell.

A friar who asks alms for God's sake begs for two.

Speak no evil of women; I tell thee the meanest of them deserves respect; for of women do we not all come?

If a pretty woman only knew how anger improved her beauty! Her complexion needs no other paint than indignation.

Our treasures trifles seem, and all our life is dreaming, and the dreams themselves are dreams.

At the point when affection is not frenzy, it is not adore.

All must yield to the weight of years; conquest is not difficult for time.

No virtue can be real that has not been tried. The gold in the crucible alone is perfect; the loadstone tests the steel, and the diamond is tried by the diamond, while metals gleam the brighter in the furnace.

The dower of great beauty has always been misfortune, since happiness and beauty do not agree together.

The heart is an astrologer that always divines the truth.

How surely a knowledge of the world hardens the heart!

For man's greatest crime is to have been born.

Dreams are rough copies of the waking soul Yet uncorrected of the higher will, So that men sometimes in their dreams confess An unsuspected, or forgotten, self; -Since Dreaming, Madness, Passion, are akin In missing each that salutory rein Of reason, and the grinding will of man.

No windows give a better view than those a man brings with him in his head, not asking for tickets of admission, since at all functions, festivals, or feasts he looks out with the same nice self-composure.

Light-enchanted sunflower, thou Who gazest ever true and tender On the sun's revolving splendour.

In this treacherous world Nothing is the truth nor a lie. Everything depends on the color Of the crystal through which one sees it

Even in dreams doing good is not wasted.

Restless sunflower; cease to move.