Antonio Machado

“Wanderer, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more; wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking. By walking one makes the road, and upon glancing behind one sees the path that never will be trod again. Wanderer, there is no road-- Only wakes upon the sea.Caminante, son tus huellas el camino, y nada más; caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar. Al andar se hace camino, y al volver la vista atrás se ve la senda que nunca se ha de volver a pisar. Caminante, no hay camino, sino estelas en la mar.”

“I.Don't trace out your profile--forget your side view--all that is outer stuff.II.Look for your other halfwho walks always next to youand tends to be who you aren't.”

“Hope says: one dayyou will see her, if you will only wait.Despair says:all you have left of her is your bitterness.Beat, heart…The earthhas not swallowed everything.”

“Travelers, there is no path, paths are made by walking.”

“Between living and dreaming there is a third thing. Guess it.”

“While the burning fish is tracing his arcnear the cypress, beneath the highest blue of all,and the blind boy flies away in the white stone,and the ivory poem of the green cicadabeats and reverberates in the elm,let us give honor to the Lord—the black mark of his good hand—who has arranged for silence in all this noise. Honor to the god of distance and of absence,ff the anchor in the sea—the open sea…He frees us from the world—it’s everywhere—he opens roads for us to walk on. With our cup of darkness filled to the brim,with our heart that always knows some hunger,let us give honor to the Lord who created the zeroand carved our thought out of the block of faith.”

“I thought my fireplace dead and stirred the ashes. I burned my fingers.”

“I dreamt -- marvellous error! -- that I had a beehive here inside my heart. And the golden bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures.”

“Like an abandoned dog who cannot finda smell or a track and roamsalong the roads, with no road, likethe child who in a night of the fairgets lost among the crowd,and the air is dusty, and the candlesfluttering,--astounded, his heartweighed down by music and by pain;that’s how I am, drunk, sad by nature,a mad and lunar guitarist, a poet,and an ordinary man lost in dreams,searching constantly for God among the mists.”

“Man would be otherwise. That is the essence of the specifically human.”