Antonio Porchia quotes:

In a full heart there is room for everything, and in an empty heart there is room for nothing.

A door opens to me. I go in and am faced with a hundred closed doors.

Infancy is what is eternal, and the rest, all the rest, is brevity, extreme brevity.

You do not see the river of mourning because it lacks one tear of your own.

Flowers are without hope. Because hope is tomorrow and flowers have no tomorrow.

One lives in the hope of becoming a memory.

God has given a great deal to man, but man would like something from man.

Yes, I will go. I would rather grieve over your absence than over you.

You know so much about me and yet you don't understand me. To know is not to understand. We could know everything and still not understand anything.

What words say does not last. The words last. Because words are always the same, and what they say is never the same.

I stop wanting what I am looking for, looking for it.

I love you as you are, but do not tell me how that is.

Night is a world lit by itself.

Set out from any point. They are all alike. They all lead to a point of departure.

Truth has very few friends and those few are suicides.

He who has seen everything empty itself is close to knowing what everything is filled with.

I have been my own disciple and my own master. And I have been a good disciple but a bad master.

They will say you are on the wrong road, if it is your own.

That in man which cannot be domesticated is not his evil but his goodness.

I know what I have given you... I do not know what you have received.

He who does not fill his world with phantoms remains alone.

The chains that bind us the most closely are the ones we have broken.

I keep my hands empty for the sake of what I have had in them.

We become aware of the void as we fill it.

And if you find everything as soon as you look for it, you find it in vain, you look for it in vain.

My heaviness comes from the heights.

I would go to heaven, but I would take my hell; I would not go alone.

A little candor never leaves me. It is what protects me.

All the suns labor to kindle your flame and a microbe puts it out.

I am chained to the earth to pay for the freedom of my eyes.

Certainties are arrived at only on foot.

The children whom nobody leads by the hand are the children who know they are children.

My poverty is not complete: it lacks me.

You think you are killing me. I think you are committing suicide.

The fear of separation is all that unites.

They have stopped deceiving you, not loving you. And it seems to you that they have stopped loving you.

Situated in some nebulous distance I do what I do so that the universal balance of which I am a part may remain a balance.

Almost always it is the fear of being ourselves that brings us to the mirror.

A large heart can be filled with very little.

The flower that you hold in your hands was born today and already it is as old as you are.

The shadows: some hide, others reveal.

Everything is a little bit of darkness, even the light.

When the superficial wearies me, it wearies me so much that I need an abyss in order to rest.

My father, when he went, made my childhood a gift of a half a century.

The real "it is well" is something I say from the ground, having fallen.

When I believe in nothing I do not want to meet you when you believe in nothing.

Beyond my body my veins are invisible.

He who has made a thousand things and he who has made none, both feel the same desire: to make something.

When your suffering is a little greater than my suffering I feel that I am a little cruel.

When I break any of the chains that bind me I feel that I make myself smaller.

I have scarcely touched the sky and I am made of it.

A thing, until it is everything, is noise, and once it is everything it is silence.

We tear life out of life to use it for looking at itself.

Yes I will try to be. Because I believe that not being is arrogant.

What we pay for with our lives never costs too much.

Not believing has a sickness which is believing a little.

If you are good to this one and that one, this one and that one will say that you are good. If you are good to everyone, no one will say that you are good.

Man, when he does not grieve, hardly exists.

You can owe nothing, if you give back its light to the sun.

When I die, I will not see myself die, for the first time.

Even the smallest of creatures carries the sun in its eyes.

Following straight lines shortens distances, and also life.

Whatever I take, I take too much or too little; I do not take the exact amount. The exact amount is no use to me.

If you do not raise your eyes you will think that you are the highest point.

Nothing is not only nothing. It is also our prison.

Without this ridiculous vanity that takes the form of self-display, and is part of everything and everyone, we would see nothing, and nothing would exist.

Man goes nowhere. Everything comes to man, like tomorrow.

If those who owe us nothing gave us nothing, how poor we would be.

Out of a hundred years a few minutes were made that stayed with me, not a hundred years.

Yes, one must suffer, even in vain, so as not to have lived in vain.

Those who gave away their wings are sad not to see them fly.

If a fanatic is willing to give his life for a cause, he's probably willing to give yours as well I know what I have given you. I do not know what you have received

My truths do not last long in me. Not as long as those that are not mine.

He who goes step by step always finds himself level with a step.

I believe that the soul consists of its sufferings. For the soul that cures its own sufferings dies.

He who holds me by a thread is not strong; the thread is strong.

Some things become such a part of us that we forget them.

Everything that I bear within me bound, is to be found somewhere else free.

The confession of one man humbles all.

When I am asleep I dream what I dream when I am awake. It's a continuous dream.

No one understands that you have given everything. You must give more.

You are fastened to them and cannot understand how, because they are not fastened to you.

No one is a light unto himself, not even the sun.

Suffering is above, not below. And everyone thinks that suffering is below. And everyone wants to rise.

If only I could leave everything as it is, without moving a single star or a single cloud. Oh, if only I could!

A hundred men together are the hundredth part of a man.

Would there be this eternal seeking if the found existed?

When I do not walk in the clouds I walk as though I were lost.

We have a world for each one, but we do not have a world for all.

Man, when he is merely what he seems to be, is almost nothing.

Yes, this is what good is: to forgive evil. There is no other good.

Humanity does not know where to go because no one is waiting for it: not even God.

Man talks about everything, and he talks about everything as though the understanding of everything were all inside him.

Everything had been stripped of deceptions, that time. And that time I was afraid of everything.

Not using faults does not mean that one does not have them.

He who does not know how to believe, should not know.

You are sad because they abandon you and you have not fallen.

I have come one step away from everything. And here I stay, far from everything, one step away.

Every time I wake, I understand how easy it is to be nothing

My bits of time play with eternity.

Sometimes at night I light a lamp so as not to see.

When everything is finished, the mornings are sad.

I can wait for you longer. Because you have arrived.

What do others think they see?

It's been a long time since I asked anything of heaven, and my arms still haven't come down.

My great day came and went, I do not know how. Because it did not pass through dawn when it came, nor through dusk when it went.

My final belief is suffering. And I begin to believe that I do not suffer.

He who tells the truth says almost nothing.

The dream which is not fed with dream disappears.

The less you think you are, the more you bear. And if you think you are nothing, you bear everything.

I will help you to approach if you approach, and to keep away if you keep away.

I began my comedy as its only actor and I come to the end as its only spectator.

Before I travelled my road I was my road.

Human suffering, while it is asleep, is shapeless. If it is wakened it takes the form of the waker.

More grievous than tears is the sight of them.

I would ask something more of this world, if it had something more.

He who makes a paradise of his bread makes a hell of his hunger.

Injury, when it is slight, upsets me; when it is strong it calms me.

When I look for my existence I do not look for it in myself.

There are sufferings that have lost their memory and do not remember why they are suffering.