# Eugenio Montale's most famous lines (with the poem)

"Often I have encountered the evil of living", "This alone we can tell you today: what we are not, what we do not want" and "I have gone down, giving you my arm, at least a million stairs": the lines by Nobel laureate Eugenio Montale everyone remembers, from Cuttlefish Bones to Satura, with the poem each comes from.

- 26 votes · 12 items
- Jun 20, 2024 · episodio_sardegna
- https://even.best/en/l/5156/eugenio-montale-s-most-famous-lines-with-the-poem

## Top 12

1. **Listen to me: the laureate poets / move only among plants / with rarely used names.** (4 · ▲4 ▼0) — "I limoni", Cuttlefish Bones (1925).
2. **Often I have encountered the evil of living: / it was the strangled stream that gurgles, / the curling of the parched leaf, / the fallen horse.** (3 · ▲3 ▼0) — "Spesso il male di vivere ho incontrato", Cuttlefish Bones (1925).
3. **This alone we can tell you today: / what we are not, what we do not want.** (3 · ▲3 ▼0) — "Non chiederci la parola", Cuttlefish Bones (1925).
4. **The connections, the bookings, / the traps, the scorn of those who believe / that reality is what one sees.** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — "I have gone down, giving you my arm", Satura (1971).
5. **Perhaps one morning, walking in air of glass, / dry, I will turn and see the miracle happen: / nothingness at my back, the void behind me.** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — "Forse un mattino andando", Cuttlefish Bones (1925).
6. **Genius leaves a few tiny pawprints / like a hare on the snow.** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — "Genius", Satura (1971).
7. **I am here because I have written poems, an utterly useless product, but almost never a harmful one.** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Nobel Prize speech (1975).
8. **I have gone down, giving you my arm, at least a million stairs / and now that you are not here there is emptiness at every step.** (1 · ▲2 ▼1) — "I have gone down, giving you my arm", Satura (1971).
9. **Happiness attained, for you / we walk on a knife's edge.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — "Felicità raggiunta", Cuttlefish Bones (1925).
10. **The truest reason belongs to the one who keeps silent.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — "So l'ora", Cuttlefish Bones (1925).
11. **Something unforeseen / is the only hope.** (0 · ▲1 ▼1) — "Before the Journey", Satura (1971).
12. **It takes too many lives to make one.** (-1 · ▲0 ▼1) — "Summer", The Occasions (1939).

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.