Quote

I’ve seen the nations rise and fall. I’ve heard their stories, heard them all, but love’s the only engine of survival.

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
Seen
Heard
Nations
Fall
Stories
Engine
Love
Engines
Rise
Survival

More quotes by Leonard Cohen

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To keep our hearts open is probably the most urgent responsibility you have as you get older.
Leonard Cohen
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It's four in the morning, the end of december I'm writing you now just to see if you're better.
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The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and it's overturned the order of the soul.
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I cannot understand why my arm is not a lilac tree.
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This civil action is another case of a tragedy that has become all too familiar in the music industry: a business manager and professional advisers exploit an immensely talented artist's loyalty and trust through greed, self-dealing, concealment, knowing misrepresentation and reckless disregard for professional fiduciary duties.
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You who wish to conquer pain, you must learn what makes one kind.
Leonard Cohen
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The psychologists are valiantly trying to provide us with answers, the religious people are trying to provide us with answers. I think it properly falls on the cultural workers to investigate this predicament with a little less concern for the marketplace and a little more concern for their higher calling.
Leonard Cohen
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Please make me empty, if I'm empty then I can receive, if I can receive it means it comes from somewhere outside of me, if it comes from outside of me I'm not alone! I cannot bear this loneliness. Above all it is loneliness.
Leonard Cohen
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Garages, barns and attics are always older than the buildings to which they are attached.
Leonard Cohen
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Probably all cultures, certainly Western culture, always have been violent.
Leonard Cohen
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I lit a thin green candle to make you jealous of me, but the room just filled up with mosquitoes.
Leonard Cohen
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My son and my daughter have both been an incredibly sustaining force, especially through this recent bad patch [of health]. So, I've been blessed and grateful for their company and for their assistance.
Leonard Cohen
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You can say that I've grown bitter but of this you can be sure. The rich have get their channels in the bedrooms of the poor. And there's a mighty Judgement coming but I may be wrong.
Leonard Cohen
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Seven to eleven is a huge chunk of life, full of dulling and forgetting. It is fabled that we slowly lose the gift of speech with animals, that birds no longer visit our windowsills to converse. As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armor themselves against wonder.
Leonard Cohen
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Fare thee well my nightingale, I lived but to be near you. Thow you are singing somewhere still I can no longer hear you.
Leonard Cohen
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I've forgotten most of what I've read and, frankly, it never seemed very important to me or to the world.
Leonard Cohen
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And I'll dance with you in Vienna, I'll be wearing a river's disguise. The hyacinth wild on my shoulder my mouth on the dew of your thighs. And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook, with the photographs there and the moss. And I'll yield to the flood of your beauty, my cheap violin and my cross.
Leonard Cohen
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One is given to self-dramatization from time to time. I intend to live forever.
Leonard Cohen
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You can do anything you want to [ in ashram] if you can find the time. It's a very rigorous day. It starts at 2:30 in the morning and often doesn't end until midnight, so if you can actually find a moment to have a drink or a smoke, you're quite welcome to, as long as it doesn't interfere with your capacity to follow the schedule.
Leonard Cohen
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I had the title poet, and maybe I was one for a while. Also, the title singer was kindly accorded me, even though I could barely carry a tune.
Leonard Cohen