# C. P. Cavafy's best-known lines (with the poem)

"As you set out for Ithaka", "Waiting for the Barbarians", "The City" and "Thermopylae": the lines by Constantine P. Cavafy everyone knows, each with the poem it comes from.

- 18 votes · 14 items
- Dec 16, 2023 · cretebassline
- https://even.best/en/l/5180/c-p-cavafy-s-best-known-lines-with-the-poem

## Top 14

1. **And now, what will become of us without barbarians? / Those people were a kind of solution.** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Poem "Waiting for the Barbarians".
2. **Now that you have wasted your life here, in this small corner, / you have destroyed it everywhere in the world.** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Poem "The City".
3. **For some people the day comes / when they have to declare the great Yes / or the great No.** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Poem "Che fece… il gran rifiuto".
4. **The days gone by remain behind us, / a mournful line of snuffed-out candles.** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Poem "Candles".
5. **And if you cannot shape your life the way you want, / at least try as much as you can / not to degrade it.** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Poem "As Much As You Can".
6. **Honour to those who in their lives / have set out to guard Thermopylae.** (1 · ▲2 ▼1) — Poem "Thermopylae".
7. **And tomorrow ends up no longer seeming like tomorrow.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Poem "Monotony".
8. **As one long prepared, and graced with courage, / … / go firmly to the window.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Poem "The God Abandons Antony".
9. **And what else is art but details?** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Oral tradition, collected in his "Prose" (Fexis, 1963).
10. **And in art again, I rest from the labour of it.** (0 · ▲1 ▼1) — Poem "Painted".
11. **As you set out for Ithaka / hope the voyage is a long one, / full of adventure, full of discovery.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Poem "Ithaka".
12. **Imperceptibly they have closed me off from the outside world.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Poem "Walls".
13. **Perhaps the light will be a new tyranny. / Who knows what new things it will show.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Poem "The Windows".
14. **The essential thing is that he burst with rage.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — "In the Outskirts of Antioch", the last line Cavafy wrote.

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.