# Odysseas Elytis's best-known lines (with their collection)

From the "mad pomegranate tree" of Orientations to The Axion Esti and Maria Nefeli: the lines by Nobel laureate Odysseas Elytis (1911–1996) that every Greek knows, with the collection and year.

- 37 votes · 14 items
- Nov 19, 2022 · cretebassline
- https://even.best/en/l/5275/odysseas-elytis-s-best-known-lines-with-their-collection

## Top 14

1. **With the first drop of rain, summer was killed.** (5 · ▲5 ▼0) — From the collection "Orientations" (1940).
2. **Sorrow grows beautiful because we resemble her.** (5 · ▲5 ▼0) — From the collection "Maria Nefeli" (1978).
3. **The last journey looks like the very first.** (4 · ▲4 ▼0) — From the collection "Sun the First" (1943).
4. **This small world, the great!** (3 · ▲3 ▼0) — From the collection "The Axion Esti" (1959).
5. **Is it the mad pomegranate tree that fights the cloudiness of the world?** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — From the collection "Orientations" (1940).
6. **Greek the language they gave me; / a poor house on the sandy shores of Homer.** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — From the collection "The Axion Esti" (1959).
7. **No wave holds malice in its breast.** (1 · ▲2 ▼1) — From the collection "Orientations" (1940).
8. **Only he who wrestles with the darkness within him will one day have his own share of the sun.** (1 · ▲2 ▼1) — From the collection "The Axion Esti" (1959).
9. **What I love is born unceasingly. What I love is always at its beginning.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — From the collection "Sun the First" (1943).
10. **Whatever you save in the lightning will last pure for ever.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — From the collection "The Axion Esti" (1959).
11. **My God, how much blue you spend so that we cannot see you!** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — From the collection "Maria Nefeli" (1978).
12. **Man is a great thing, just to think of it.** (0 · ▲1 ▼1) — From the collection "The Stepchildren" (1974).
13. **There is no such thing as a mistaken sea.** (0 · ▲1 ▼1) — From the collection "Maria Nefeli" (1978).
14. **A young woman's breast is already an article of a future Constitution.** (-1 · ▲1 ▼2) — From the collection "Three Poems under a Flag of Convenience" (1982).

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.