Top 250 Leonard Cohen Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Here’s to the few who forgive what you do, and the fewer who don’t even care.”

— Leonard Cohen

102. “Only one thing made him happy and now that it was gone everything made him happy.”

— Leonard Cohen

103. “Forget the perfect offering. Everything is flawed. It’s the cracks that let the Light in...”

— Leonard Cohen

104. “The candles burned The moon went down The polished hill The milky town Transparent, weightless, luminous Uncovering the two of us On that fundamental ground Where love’s unwilled, unleashed, unbound And half the perfect world is found.”

— Leonard Cohen

105. “Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone.”

— Leonard Cohen

106. “Your faith was strong, but you needed proof...”

— Leonard Cohen

107. “What a beautiful testament to the creative spirit and its true motives, to creative contribution coming from a place of purpose rather than a hunger for profit.”

— Leonard Cohen

108. “Women stand for the objective world for a man. They stand for the thing that you’re not and that’s what you always reach for in a song.”

— Leonard Cohen

109. “The moon is swimming naked and the summer night is fragrant with a mighty expectation of relief.”

— Leonard Cohen

110. “Games are nature’s most beautiful creation.”

— Leonard Cohen

111. “As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armour themselves against wonder.”

— Leonard Cohen

112. “You are locked into your suffering and your pleasures are the seal.”

— Leonard Cohen

113. “I lit a thin green candle to make you jealous of me, but the room just filled up with mosquitoes.”

— Leonard Cohen

114. “When you stop thinking about yourself all the time, a certain sense of repose overtakes you.”

— Leonard Cohen

115. “I never think about The Past but sometimes The Past thinks about me and sits down ever so lightly on my face –.”

— Leonard Cohen

116. “You who build these altars now to sacrifice these children, you must not do it anymore. A scheme is not a vision and you never have been tempted by a demon or a god .”

— Leonard Cohen

117. “Don’t call yourself a secret unless you mean to keep it.”

— Leonard Cohen

118. “Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm.”

— Leonard Cohen

119. “A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love...”

— Leonard Cohen

120. “I’m old and the mirrors don’t lie.”

— Leonard Cohen

121. “When you’re not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you’ve sinned.”

— Leonard Cohen

122. “I almost went to bed without remembering the four white violets I put in the button-hole of your green sweater and how i kissed you then and you kissed me shy as though I’d never been your lover.”

— Leonard Cohen

123. “Blessed is your name. Blessed is the confession of your name.”

— Leonard Cohen

124. “I have to finish it in order to know whether it deserves to survive.”

— Leonard Cohen

125. “Bind me to your will, bind me with these threads of sorrow, and gather me out of the afternoon where I have torn my soul on twenty monstrous altars, offering all things but myself.”

— Leonard Cohen

126. “I don’t remember lighting this cigarette and I don’t remember if I’m here alone or waiting for someone.”

— Leonard Cohen

127. “Friend, when you speak this carefully I know it is because you don’t know what to say.”

— Leonard Cohen

128. “Well it’s true, ever since I stopped eating meat I feel a lot better among animals, I feel I can be much more honest when I pat a dog.”

— Leonard Cohen

129. “A heavy burden lifted from my soul, I heard that love was out of my control.”

— Leonard Cohen

130. “It looks like freedom but it feels like death, it’s something in between I guess. It’s closing time.”

— Leonard Cohen

131. “My page was too white My ink was too thin The day wouldn’t write What the night pencilled in.”

— Leonard Cohen

132. “If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn they will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem.”

— Leonard Cohen

133. “Show me slowly what I only know the limits of Dance me to the end of love.”

— Leonard Cohen

134. “Dream after dream we all lie in each other’s arms.”

— Leonard Cohen

135. “This mental space is occupied and everything is mine.”

— Leonard Cohen

136. “Prayer is translation. A man translates himself into a child asking for all there is in a language he has barely mastered.”

— Leonard Cohen

137. “The cutting of the gem has to be finished before you can see whether it shines.”

— Leonard Cohen

138. “I always thought that poetry is the verdict that others give to a certain kind of writing. So to call yourself a poet is a kind of dangerous description. It’s for others; it’s for others to use.”

— Leonard Cohen

139. “It is easy to display a wound, the proud scars of combat. It is hard to show a pimple.”

— Leonard Cohen

140. “When things get really bad, just raise your glass and stamp your feet and do a little jig. That’s about all you can do.”

— Leonard Cohen

141. “The wretched beast is tame I don’t need a lover So blow out the flame...”

— Leonard Cohen

142. “The art of longing’s over, and it’s never coming back.”

— Leonard Cohen

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

— Leonard Cohen

144. “The less I was of who I was, the better I felt.”

— Leonard Cohen

145. “I told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you.”

— Leonard Cohen

146. “Like any joker, he was watching For the card that is so high and wild He’ll never need to deal another He was just some Joseph looking for a manger.”

— Leonard Cohen

147. “Stunned and still not suffering. Swollen with care and anxiety and still not suffering. Useless, old and full of grief, but still not suffering.”

— Leonard Cohen

148. “I swear by this song and by all that I have done wrong, I will make it all up to thee.”

— Leonard Cohen

149. “Ah, grief makes us precise!”

— Leonard Cohen

150. “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