Eugenio Montale Quotes & Sayings

“I have always knocked at the door of that wonderful and terrible enigma which is life.”

“Too many lives are needed to make just one.”

“I have been judged to be a pessimist but what abyss of ignorance and low egoism is not hidden in one who thinks that Man is the god of himself and that his future can only be triumphant?”

“Mass communication, radio, and especially television, have attempted, not without success, to annihilate every possibility of solitude and reflection.”

“Happiness, for you we walk on a knife edge. To the eyes you are a flickering light, to the feet, thin ice that cracks; and so may no one touch you who loves you.”

“Against the dark background of this contemporary civilization of well-being, even the arts tend to mingle, to lose their identity.”

“Narrative art, the novel, from Murasaki to Proust, has produced great works of poetry.”

“Man cannot produce a single work without the assistance of the slow, assiduous, corrosive worm of thought.”

“Poetry is the art which is technically within the grasp of everyone: a piece of paper and a pencil and one is ready.”

“This proves that great lyric poetry can die, be reborn, die again, but will always remain one of the most outstanding creations of the human soul.”