Leonard Cohen Quotes and Sayings - Page 1

“I don't consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel soaked to the skin.”
-- Leonard Cohen

#Rain #Thinking #Reality

“You have money, fame, youth, beauty, talent. That's a good start... for feeling good.”
-- Leonard Cohen

#Feel Good #Feelings #Youth

“The cutting of the gem has to be finished before you can see whether it shines.”
-- Leonard Cohen

#Writing #Cutting #Shining

“Growing old becomes clear to you at a certain point. I think it's after the age of 70 you realize - you begin to actually be convinced - you're growing older.”
-- Leonard Cohen

#Thinking #Age #Growing

“Now I've heard there was a secret chord That David played, and it pleased the Lord But you don't really care for music, do you? It goes like this the fourth, the fifth The minor fall, the major lift The baffled king composing Hallelujah”
-- Leonard Cohen

#Kings #Fall #Secret

“A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love...”
-- Leonard Cohen

#Thinking #Energy #Saint

“The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.”
-- Leonard Cohen

#Sleep #Insomnia #World

“When you stop thinking about yourself all the time, a certain sense of repose overtakes you.”
-- Leonard Cohen

#Thinking About You #Thinking #Certain

“There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.”
-- Leonard Cohen

#Life #Motivational #Inspiring

“Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.”
-- Leonard Cohen

#Love #Children #Secret

“Love is not a victory march”
-- Leonard Cohen

#Life #Love Is #Victory

“A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.”
-- Leonard Cohen

#Flesh #Scar #Self Injury

“We are not mad. We are human.We want to love, and someone must forgive us for the paths we take to love, for the paths are many and dark, and we are ardent and cruel in our journey.”
-- Leonard Cohen

#Dark #Journey #Mad

“I speak of a clinical depression that is the background of your entire life, a background of anguish and anxiety, a sense that nothing goes well, that pleasure is unavailable and all your strategies collapse.”
-- Leonard Cohen

#Anxiety #Speak #Strategy

“We're in a world where there's famine and hunger and people are dodging bullets and having their nails pulled out in dungeons so it's very hard for me to place any high value on the work that I do to write a song. Yeah, I work hard but compared to what?”
-- Leonard Cohen

#Song #Hard Work #Writing

“Let judges secretly despair of justice: their verdicts will be more acute. Let generals secretly despair of triumph; killing will be defamed. Let priests secretly despair of faith: their compassion will be true.”
-- Leonard Cohen

#Compassion #Judging #Justice

“You lose your grip, and then you slip into the Masterpiece.”
-- Leonard Cohen

#Emotional #Masterpiece

“It's time that we began to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again.”
-- Leonard Cohen

#Laughing #Cry

“I cannot understand why my arm is not a lilac tree.”
-- Leonard Cohen

#Tree #Arms #Lilac

“As I grew older, I understood that instructions came with this voice. What were these instructions? The instructions were never to lament casually. And if one is to express the great inevitable defeat that awaits us all, it must be done within the strict confines of dignity and beauty.”
-- Leonard Cohen

#Voice #Done #Dignity

“There are always meaningful songs for somebody. People are doing their courting, people are finding their wives, people are making babies, people are washing their dishes, people are getting through the day, with songs that we may find insignificant. But their significance is affirmed by others. There’s always someone affirming the significance of a song by taking a woman into his arms or by getting through the night. That’s what dignifies the song. Songs don’t dignify human activity. Human activity dignifies the song.”
-- Leonard Cohen

#Meaningful #Song #Baby

“even damnation is poisoned with rainbows.”
-- Leonard Cohen

#Rainbow #Damnation

“I am running through a snowfall which is her thighs, he dramatized in purple. Her thighs are filling up the street. Wide as a snowfall, heavy as huge falling Zeppelins, her damp thighs are settling on the sharp roofs and wooden balconies. Weather-vanes press the shape of roosters and sail-boats into the skin. The faces of famous statues are preserved like intaglios....”
-- Leonard Cohen

#Running #Fall #Weather

“Comic books, movies, radio programmes centered their entertainment around the fact of torture. With the clearest of consciences, with a patriotic intensity, children dreamed, talked, acted orgies of physical abuse. Imaginations were released to wander on a reconnaissance mission from Cavalry to Dachau. European children starved and watched their parents scheme and die. Here we grew up with toy whips. Early warning against our future leaders, the war babies.”
-- Leonard Cohen

#Baby #Children #War

“Never make a decision when you need to pee.”
-- Leonard Cohen

#Decision #Needs

“I fought against the bottle, but I had to do it drunk. Took my diamond to the pawn shop, but that don't make it junk.”
-- Leonard Cohen

#Drunk #Junk #Bottles

“Here's to the few who forgive what you do, and the fewer who don't even care”
-- Leonard Cohen

#Friendship #Forgiving #Care

“Deprivation is the mother of poetry.”
-- Leonard Cohen

#Mother #Deprivation

“Do not be a magician - be magic!”
-- Leonard Cohen

#Magic #Ethics #Moral

“You live your life as if it's real.......a thousand kisses deep”
-- Leonard Cohen

#Real #Kissing #Live Your Life