Quote

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

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Leonard Cohen
Age: 82 †
Born: 1934
Born: September 21
Died: 2016
Died: November 7
Film Actor
Lyricist
Musician
Novelist
Pianist
Poet
Record Producer
Screenwriter
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Street Artist
Writer
Leonard Norman Cohen
Jikan
Triumph
Killing
Verdicts
Despair
Acute
Judging
Generals
Compassion
Verdict
Justice
Secretly
Faith
Judges
True
Priests

More quotes by Leonard Cohen

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Does anybody have a cigarette? I'm looking forward to that first smoke. I've been looking forward to [it] for about 30 years.
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My mind was always very cluttered, so I took great pains to simplify my environment, because if my environment were half as cluttered as my mind, I wouldn't be able to make it from room to room. This system has just worked for me, even though I've had to sweat over every word. It's just my style.
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If you want a lover I'll do anything you ask. If you want a different kind of love I'll wear a mask. If you want to strike me down in anger here I stand. If you want a partner in life take my hand. I'm your man.
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I loved you when you opened like a lily to the heat you see I’m just another snowman standing in the rain and sleet who loved you with his frozen love, his second hand physique, with all he is and all he was a thousand kisses deep.
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We are so small between the stars, so large against the sky.
Leonard Cohen
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The Dream O I had such a wonderful dream, she said. I dreamed you made love to me. At last, he said to himself, the spirit has taken up some of the heavy work.
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I think what we like about music - and what we like about art in general....is that enterprise that stops our minds from spinning. Because we're always all over the place. A good song, a good lyric is a movie: it will just focus and calm and confer significance on this completely bewildering reality that all of us live in.
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Do not be a magician - be magic!
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I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm, your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy, golden storm, yes many loved before us, I know we are not new, in city and in forest they smiled like me and you, but now it's come to distances and both of us must try, your eyes are soft with sorrow, Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.
Leonard Cohen
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I cannot understand why my arm is not a lilac tree.
Leonard Cohen
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Ah, grief makes us precise!
Leonard Cohen
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Anything I tell you is an alibi for something else. Then let's be quiet together.
Leonard Cohen
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To every people the land is given on condition. Perceived or not, there is a Covenant, beyond the constitution, beyond sovereign guarantee, beyond the nation's sweetest dreams of itself.
Leonard Cohen
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I always felt I was scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to get a song together.
Leonard Cohen
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I read with some amusement my reputation as a ladies' man. My friends are amused by that, too, because they know my life.
Leonard Cohen
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A community is an alibi for the failure of individual love.
Leonard Cohen
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What is most original in a man's nature is often that which is most desperate. Thus new systems are forced on the world by men who simply cannot bear the pain of living with what is. Creators care nothing for their systems except that they be unique. If Hitler had been born in Nazi Germany he wouldn't have been content to enjoy the atmosphere.
Leonard Cohen
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As a young man, Yeats spoke to me in a way I could understand. Shakespeare I couldn't understand, but Yeats I could. It was his subject matter and also I really admired the way he put his personal life on the line.
Leonard Cohen
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I smile when I'm angry , I cheat and I lie. I do what I have to do to get by. But I know what is wrong and I know what is right , and I'd die for the truth in my secret life .
Leonard Cohen
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I feel that this is a vocabulary that I grew up with. This biblical landscape is very familiar to me, and it's natural that I use those landmarks as references. Once they were universal references and everybody understood and knew them and located them. That's no longer the case today, but it is still my landscape.
Leonard Cohen