576 Quotes by Leonard Cohen

The duty of lovers is to tarnish the Golden Rule.

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 .

Listen to a name so private it can burn hear it said aloud and learn and learn History is a needle for putting men asleep anointed with the poison of all they want to keep Now.

I have often prayed for you like this Let me have her.

Rust rust rust in the engines of love and time.

There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say there isn’t.

I looked for you in everyone And they called me on that too I lived alone but I was only Coming back to you.

Even without the mushroom cloud still I would have hated Listen I would have done the same things even if there were no death I will not be held like a drunkard under the cold tap of facts I refuse the universal alibi.

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.