Explore a treasure trove of wisdom and insight from Leonard Cohen through their most impactful and thought-provoking quotes and sayings. Broaden your horizons with their inspiring words and share these beautiful quote pictures from Leonard Cohen with your friends and followers on popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blog - all free of charge. Delve into our collection of the top 249 Leonard Cohen quotes, handpicked for you to discover and share with others.

The first star tonight insanely high, virgin, calm.I have one hour of peace before the documented planets burn me down. By Leonard Cohen

You who wish to conquer pain, you must learn what makes one kind. By Leonard Cohen

I wish I could say everything in one word. I hate all the things that can happen between the beginning of a sentence and the end. By Leonard Cohen

A woman watches her body uneasily, as though it were an unreliable ally in the battle for love. By Leonard Cohen

Raise a million filters and the rain will not be clean, until the longing for it be refined in deep confession. By Leonard Cohen

I have often prayed for you like this Let me have her By Leonard Cohen

I'm neither left or right. I'm just staying home tonight, getting lost in that hopeless little screen. By Leonard Cohen

The wretched beast is tame I don't need a lover So blow out the flame... By Leonard Cohen

we met when we were almost young By Leonard Cohen

Ordinary eternal machinery, like the grinding of the stars By Leonard Cohen

I didn't fall in love of course it's never up to you but she was walking back and forth and i was passing through By Leonard Cohen

May you be surrounded by friends and family, and if this is not your lot, may the blessings find you in your solitude. By Leonard Cohen

Dear friend, I have searched all nightthrough each burnt paper,but I fear I will never findthe formula to let you die By Leonard Cohen

We sold ourselves for love but now we are free I'm so sorry for that ghost I made you be Only one of us was real and that was me By Leonard Cohen

Act the way you'd like to be and soon you'll be the way you act. By Leonard Cohen

Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone. By Leonard Cohen

I don't rememberlighting this cigaretteand I don't rememberif I'm here aloneor waiting for someone. By Leonard Cohen

And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook, with the photographs there and the moths. By Leonard Cohen

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. By Leonard Cohen

My animal howlsMy angel's upsetBut I'm not allowedA trace of regret By Leonard Cohen

I am not the one who loved, it's love that chooses me.When hatred with it's package comes, you forbid delivery. By Leonard Cohen

You came to me this morningAnd you handled me like meatYou'd have to be a man to knowHow good that feels, how sweet By Leonard Cohen

I greet you from the other side of sorrow and despair, with a love so vast and shattered it will reach you everywhere. By Leonard Cohen

I am not the one who loves -It's love that chooses me. By Leonard Cohen

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 By Leonard Cohen

Never make a decision when you need to pee. By Leonard Cohen

To the men and women who own men and womenthose of us meant to be loverswe will not pardon youfor wasting our bodies and time By Leonard Cohen

I alwaysthought of myself as a competent, minor poet. I know who I'm up against. By Leonard Cohen

Maybe there's a god above but the only thing I learned from love was how to shoot at somebody who outdrew you. By Leonard Cohen

I always considered myself a minor writer. My province is small, and I try to explore it very, very thoroughly. By Leonard Cohen

The moon is swimming naked and the summer night is fragrant with a mighty expectation of relief. By Leonard Cohen

A young nurse is standing close behind me wondering whether she is being drawn by my power or her charity. By Leonard Cohen

There's a blaze of light in every word. It doesn't matter which you heard. The holy or the broken hallelujah. By Leonard Cohen

Blessed are you who circled desire with a blade, and the garden with fiery swords, and heaven and earth with a word. By Leonard Cohen

Blessed is the covenant of love, the covenant of mercy, useless light behind the terror, deathless song in the house of night. By Leonard Cohen

I found that things became a lot easier when I no longer expected to win. You abandon your masterpiece and sink into the real masterpiece. By Leonard Cohen

The RemoteI often think about youwhen I'm lying alone inmy room with my mouthopen and the remotelost somewhere in the bed. By Leonard Cohen

And what can I tell you, my brother, my killer, what can I possibly say? I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive you, I'm glad you stood in my way By Leonard Cohen

Take one step to the side and it's all absurd. By Leonard Cohen

Friend, when you speak this carefully I know it is because you don't know what to say. By Leonard Cohen

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. By Leonard Cohen

It's hard to hold the hand of anyone who is reaching for the sky just to surrender By Leonard Cohen

Forget the perfect offering. Everything is flawed. It's the cracks that let the Light in ... By Leonard Cohen

No penance serves to renew them, no massive transfusions of trust. Why not even revenge can undo them, so twisted these vows and so crushed. By Leonard Cohen

Then I start to struggleWith a feeble songWhich will overcome meMany miles from home By Leonard Cohen

Sail on, sail on, o' might Ship of State. To the shores of need, past the reefs of greed, through the squalls of hate. Sail on, sail on, sail on. By Leonard Cohen

And here you are hurried, And here you are gone; And here is the love, That it's all built upon. By Leonard Cohen

In dreams the truth is learned that all good works are done in the absence of a caress. By Leonard Cohen

I know she is coming I know she will look And that is the longing And this is the book. By Leonard Cohen

To kiss her there was to intrude into something private and skeletal, like a turtle's shoulder. By Leonard Cohen

As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armour themselves against wonder. By Leonard Cohen

If I spelled out the Principles of FaithI would be barking on the moon. By Leonard Cohen

I lit a thin green candle to make you jealous of me, but the room just filled up with mosquitoes. By Leonard Cohen

May everyone live, And may everyone die. Hello, my love, And my love, Goodbye. By Leonard Cohen

A community is an alibi for the failure of individual love. By Leonard Cohen

I don't consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel soaked to the skin. By Leonard Cohen

Does anybody have a cigarette? I'm looking forward to that first smoke. I've been looking forward to [it] for about 30 years. By Leonard Cohen

I am an old scholar, better-looking now than when I was young. That's what sitting on your ass does to your face. By Leonard Cohen

I want history to jump on Canada's spine with sharp skates. By Leonard Cohen

English, I know you ... you are German with a license to kill. By Leonard Cohen

Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm By Leonard Cohen

The dreamers ride against the men of action. Oh see the men of action falling back. By Leonard Cohen

I'm just waiting for the miracle to come By Leonard Cohen

The Maestro says it's Mozart but it sounds like bubble gum when you're waiting for the miracle to come. By Leonard Cohen

All the lousy little poets coming around trying to sound like Charles Manson. By Leonard Cohen

It doesn't matter what you do because it's going to happen anyway. By Leonard Cohen

Music is the emotional life of the most people. By Leonard Cohen

There is a crack in everything By Leonard Cohen

Pigskin crackling on my thumb, nummy nummy I hate pain. By Leonard Cohen

I've always held the song in high regard because songs have got me through so many sinks of dishes and so many humiliating courting events. By Leonard Cohen

Pay attention to the cracks, because that's where the light gets in. By Leonard Cohen

Deprivation is the mother of poetry. By Leonard Cohen

I'm old and the mirrors don't lie. By Leonard Cohen

You have money, fame, youth, beauty, talent. That's a good start ... for feeling good. By Leonard Cohen

I told the truth, I didn't come to fool you By Leonard Cohen

You lose your grip, and then you slip into the Masterpiece. By Leonard Cohen

Someone gave me wishes and I wished for an embrace. By Leonard Cohen

Remember when I moved in you and the holy dove was moving too, and every breath we drew was, Hallelujah. By Leonard Cohen

Like a bird on a wire,like a drunk in a midnight choir,I have tried in my way to be free!! By Leonard Cohen

My reputation as a ladies' man was a joke that caused me to laugh bitterly through the ten thousand nights I spent alone. By Leonard Cohen

I read with some amusement my reputation as a ladies' man. My friends are amused by that, too, because they know my life. By Leonard Cohen

It's four in the morning, the end of december I'm writing you now just to see if you're better. By Leonard Cohen

Don't dwell on what has passed away or what is yet to be. By Leonard Cohen

This mental space is occupied and everything is mine. By Leonard Cohen

My interest in this pack of failures betrays my character. By Leonard Cohen

I never really liked poetry readings; I liked to read poetry by myself, but I liked singing, chanting my lyrics to this jazz group. By Leonard Cohen

We do what only lovers can: make a gift out of necessity. By Leonard Cohen

It is easy to display a wound, the proud scars of combat. It is hard to show a pimple By Leonard Cohen

When you've fallen on the highway / and you're lying in the rain, / and they ask you how you're doing / of course you'll say you can't complain ... By Leonard Cohen

The older I get, the surer I am that I'm not running the show. By Leonard Cohen

I didn't want to write for pay. I wanted to be paid for what I write. By Leonard Cohen

Music is the emotional life of most people. By Leonard Cohen

Dream after dream we all lie in each other's arms By Leonard Cohen

You are locked into your suffering and your pleasures are the seal. By Leonard Cohen

Dear Reader, please forgive me if I have wasted your time. By Leonard Cohen

The art of longing's over, and it's never coming back. By Leonard Cohen

Who could have foretoldthe heart grows oldfrom touching others By Leonard Cohen

She was made of flesh and eyelashes. By Leonard Cohen

My page was too whiteMy ink was too thinThe day wouldn't writeWhat the night pencilled in By Leonard Cohen

There's no forsaking what you loveno existential leapas witnessed here in time and blooda thousand kisses deep By Leonard Cohen

You live your life as if it's real ... a thousand kisses deep By Leonard Cohen

And sometimes when the night is slow The wretched and the meek We gather up our hearts and go A Thousand Kisses Deep. By Leonard Cohen

You have to keep cracking yourself open or you become a parody of yourself. By Leonard Cohen

And this is our time-keeper, with a passion for percussion By Leonard Cohen

There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say there isn't. By Leonard Cohen

it's closing time By Leonard Cohen

Believe nothing of meexcept that I felt your beautymore closely than my own. By Leonard Cohen

The duty of lovers is to tarnish the Golden Rule By Leonard Cohen

Shouldering your loneliness like a gun that you will not learn to aim, you stumble into this movie house then you climb, you climb into the frame. By Leonard Cohen

Anything I tell you is an alibi for something else.Then let's be quiet together. By Leonard Cohen

I've forgotten most of what I've read and, frankly, it never seemed very important to me or to the world. By Leonard Cohen

I can work on a verse for a very long time before realising it's not any good and then, and only then, can I discard it. By Leonard Cohen

First of all nothing will happen and a little laternothing will happen again By Leonard Cohen

At first first nothing will happen to usand later on it will happen to us again. By Leonard Cohen

Although only one man may be receiving the favors of a woman, all men in her presence are warmed. By Leonard Cohen

First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin By Leonard Cohen

Don't call yourself a secret unless you mean to keep it. By Leonard Cohen

My abandoned narcotics have abandoned me. By Leonard Cohen

Nobody goes into a Zen monastery as a tourist. By Leonard Cohen

The poor stay poor, the rich get rich / Thats how it goes / Everybody knows. By Leonard Cohen

Ou wanted to be the Superman who was never Clark Kent By Leonard Cohen

Your faith was strong, but you needed proof... By Leonard Cohen

I don't want to be a star, merely dying. By Leonard Cohen

What were the bodies like on the beach? Ugly and white and ruined by offices. By Leonard Cohen

Some say that no one ever leaves Montreal, for that city, like Canada itself, is designed to preserve the past, a past that happened somewhere else. By Leonard Cohen

Ring the bells that still can ring. By Leonard Cohen

When you stop thinking about yourself all the time, a certain sense of repose overtakes you. By Leonard Cohen

If only my genitals didn't floatWhen I relaxed in the bathAnd we both looked down and we both agreedIt's stupid to be a man By Leonard Cohen

I will not be held like a drunkard / under the cold tap of facts By Leonard Cohen

It's time that we began to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again. By Leonard Cohen

Ah, grief makes us precise! By Leonard Cohen

Games are nature's most beautiful creation By Leonard Cohen

We are so small between the stars, so large against the sky. By Leonard Cohen

Don't write about ideas ... write about convictions of the heart. By Leonard Cohen

You were Marlon Brando, I was Steve McQueen, you were K.Y. Jelly, I was Vaseline. By Leonard Cohen

Every heart to Love will come, but like a refugee By Leonard Cohen

Only in Canada could somebody with a voice like mine win 'Vocalist of the Year'. By Leonard Cohen

The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world. By Leonard Cohen

I dreamed about you baby. It was just the other night. Most of you was naked Ah, but some of you was light. By Leonard Cohen

The winter has not killed usagain! By Leonard Cohen

Here is your cross, Your nails and your hill; And here is your love, That lists where it will By Leonard Cohen

Creators care nothing for their systems except that they be unique. By Leonard Cohen

Prayer is translation. A man translates himself into a child asking for all there is in a language he has barely mastered. By Leonard Cohen

Silence And a deeper silence When the crickets Hesitate By Leonard Cohen

The birds they sangat the break of day.Start again!!I heard them say By Leonard Cohen

Your body will never be familiar. By Leonard Cohen

A heavy burden lifted from my soul,I heard that love was out of my control. By Leonard Cohen

I'll be marching through the morning,Marching through the night,Moving 'cross the bordersOf My Secret Life. By Leonard Cohen

I followed the courseFrom chaos to art Desire the horse Depression the cart By Leonard Cohen

And summoned now to deal with your invincible defeatYou live your lifeAs if it's real By Leonard Cohen

even damnation is poisoned with rainbows. By Leonard Cohen

I don't trust my inner feelings, inner feelings come and go. By Leonard Cohen

The cutting of the gem has to be finished before you can see whether it shines. By Leonard Cohen

The sweetest little song:You go your wayI'll go your way too! By Leonard Cohen

You go to Heaven once you've been to Hell By Leonard Cohen

His vision was just outstanding. If you think of him in the same way as Pele then you would come close. By Leonard Cohen

Fare thee well my nightingale, I lived but to be near you. Thow you are singing somewhere still I can no longer hear you. By Leonard Cohen

Reality is one of the possibilities I cannot afford to ignore By Leonard Cohen

I'm not looking for anotherAs I wander in my time By Leonard Cohen

Rust rust rust in the engines of love and time By Leonard Cohen

Dear Hitler Take away the torches I'm not guilty I had to have this By Leonard Cohen

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. By Leonard Cohen

I always felt I was scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to get a song together. By Leonard Cohen

Poetry is a verdict, not an occupation. By Leonard Cohen

Poetry is a verdict rather than an intention. By Leonard Cohen

I cannot understand why my arm is not a lilac tree. By Leonard Cohen

We used to play music for fun. Much more than now. Now nobody picks up a guitar unless they're paid for it. By Leonard Cohen

History is a needlefor putting men asleepanointed with the poisonOf all they want to keep. By Leonard Cohen

I don't really understand that process called reincarnation but if there is such a thing I'd like to come back as my daughter's dog. By Leonard Cohen

All men will be sailors then Until the sea shall free them By Leonard Cohen

I ache in the places where I used to play... By Leonard Cohen

I swear by this song and by all that I have done wrong, I will make it all up to thee. By Leonard Cohen

I fought against the bottle, but I had to do it drunk. Took my diamond to the pawn shop, but that don't make it junk. By Leonard Cohen

Love is a fire/It burns everyone/It disfigures everyone/It is the world's excuse for being ugly. By Leonard Cohen

Marita, Please find me, I am almost 30 By Leonard Cohen

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. By Leonard Cohen

The wars they will be fought again The holy dove be caught again bought and sold and bought again; the dove is never free. By Leonard Cohen

Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as a secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh. By Leonard Cohen

When you're not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you've sinned. By Leonard Cohen

Do not be a magician - be magic! By Leonard Cohen

In our rags of light, all dressed to kill. By Leonard Cohen

My sense of proprietorship has been so weak that actually I didn't pay attention and I lost the copyrights on a lot of the songs. By Leonard Cohen

The troubles came and I saved what I could save. A thread of light, a particle, a wave. By Leonard Cohen

I'm afraid to live any place but in expectation. I'm no life-risk. By Leonard Cohen

One eye filled with blueprintsone eye filled with night By Leonard Cohen

No one masters the heart. By Leonard Cohen

I couldn't feel so I learned to touch. By Leonard Cohen

Everytime you grab at love you will lose a snowflake of your memory By Leonard Cohen

If you don't become the ocean, you'll be seasick every day. By Leonard Cohen

Well, for one thing, in the tradition of Zen that I've practiced, there is no prayerful worship and there is no affirmation of a deity. By Leonard Cohen

A man never got a woman back ... not by begging on his knees. By Leonard Cohen

Garages, barns and attics are always older than the buildings to which they are attached. By Leonard Cohen

How bitter werethe Prozac pillsof the lastfew hundred mornings By Leonard Cohen

I don't think you can write novels on the road. You need a certain stability. By Leonard Cohen

Coroner's inquest: death by drowning. And he hasn't been to the sea-shore in ten years. By Leonard Cohen

If I knew where the good songs came from, I'd go there more often. By Leonard Cohen

Journalists, especially English journalists, were very cruel to me. They said I only knew three chords when I knew five! By Leonard Cohen

And clenching your fist for the ones like us Who are oppressed by the figures of beauty. By Leonard Cohen

I showed my heart to the doctor/He said I just had to quit By Leonard Cohen

How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me? By Leonard Cohen

He knew that hair couldn't feel; he kissed her hair. By Leonard Cohen

I'm planning a catastrophe. By Leonard Cohen

After a while, if you are sufficiently bored or unemployed, you may want to read it from cover to cover. By Leonard Cohen

And most people have a woman in their heart, most men have a woman in their heart and most women have a man in their heart. By Leonard Cohen

You go your wayI'll go your way too By Leonard Cohen

The silver knives are flashing in that tired old cafe ... By Leonard Cohen

Well I am the one who loves changing from nothing to one. By Leonard Cohen

When passion diesfriendship hovers round our flesh like flies By Leonard Cohen

When we are touched by a song, it is because the artist cannot hide himself. By Leonard Cohen

Only one thing made him happy and now that it was gone everything made him happy. By Leonard Cohen

We've got to learn to love appearances. By Leonard Cohen

The most precious secret has been leaked:There is no Opposition! By Leonard Cohen

As the mist leaves no scarOn the dark green hillSo my body leaves no scarOn you and never will By Leonard Cohen

G-d is alive. Magic is afoot. G-d is afoot. Magic is alive. By Leonard Cohen

I bargain now. I offer buttons for his love. By Leonard Cohen

I was 15 when I first became deeply touched by the rhythm and structure of words. By Leonard Cohen

We are so lightly here. It is in love that we are made. In love we disappear. By Leonard Cohen

And I had not much of a voice. I didn't play that great guitar either. By Leonard Cohen

They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom ... for trying to change the system from within By Leonard Cohen

Show me slowly what I only know the limits of Dance me to the end of love By Leonard Cohen

In the broken places, the light shines through. By Leonard Cohen

The less I was of who I was, the better I felt. By Leonard Cohen

Love is the only engine of survival By Leonard Cohen

Love is not a victory march By Leonard Cohen

To discover the truth in anything that is alien, first dispense with the indispensable in your own vision. By Leonard Cohen

I'm blackening pages, but I don't know if it's writing. By Leonard Cohen

Stunned and still not suffering. Swollen with care and anxiety and still not suffering. Useless, old and full of grief, but still not suffering. By Leonard Cohen

...And everything depends upon how near you sleep to me. By Leonard Cohen

Everybody knows that you've been faithful, give or take a night or two. By Leonard Cohen

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. By Leonard Cohen

I listen to the radio and I like all kinds of music, you know, but I like to hear from people who have been there. Hank Williams has been there. By Leonard Cohen

Do not believe the truth. The truth is tiny compared to what you have to do. By Leonard Cohen

I don't even hate books anymore. By Leonard Cohen

You win a while, and then it's done - Your little winning streak. By Leonard Cohen

The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and it's overturned the order of the soul ... By Leonard Cohen

Follow me, the wise man said, but he walked behind. By Leonard Cohen

Lets sing another song, boys/ this one has grown old and bitter. By Leonard Cohen

I had the title poet, and maybe I was one for a while. Also, the title singer was kindly accorded me, even though I could barely carry a tune. By Leonard Cohen

Everything has a crack in it; that's how the light gets in. By Leonard Cohen

Everybody knows the dice are loaded. By Leonard Cohen

I have tried in my way to be free. By Leonard Cohen

I have to finish it in order to know whether it deserves to survive. By Leonard Cohen

It's you my love, you who are the stranger. By Leonard Cohen

Here's to the few who forgive what you do, and the fewer who don't even care By Leonard Cohen

I want to be paid for my work, not work for my pay. By Leonard Cohen

We are ugly but we have the music. By Leonard Cohen

I've seen the future and it's murder. By Leonard Cohen

Success is survival. By Leonard Cohen

The first star tonight insanely high, virgin, calm.br />I have one hour of peace before the documented planets burn me down. By Leonard Cohen