# George Seferis's best-known lines (with the poem)

From "Denial", set to music by Theodorakis, to "Wherever I travel, Greece wounds me": the lines everyone knows by George Seferis (1900–1971), the first Greek Nobel laureate, with the title of each poem.

- 33 votes · 12 items
- Jun 4, 2023 · cretebassline
- https://even.best/en/l/5278/george-seferis-s-best-known-lines-with-the-poem

## Top 12

1. **With what heart, what breath, / what longings and what passion / we lived our life: a mistake! / So we changed our life.** (5 · ▲5 ▼0) — Poem "Denial" (1931).
2. **And if I speak to you in fables and parables / it is because it is gentler for you to hear them.** (3 · ▲4 ▼1) — Poem "Last Stop", Logbook II (1945).
3. **Each one dreams apart and does not hear the nightmare of the others.** (2 · ▲3 ▼1) — Poem "Salamis in Cyprus".
4. **On the secret seashore / white like a pigeon / we thirsted at noon: / but the water was brackish.** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Poem "Denial" (1931).
5. **Memory, wherever you touch it, hurts.** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Poem "Memory".
6. **The stranger and the enemy, we saw him in the mirror.** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Poem "Argonauts".
7. **The heroes move ahead in the dark.** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Poem "Last Stop", Logbook II (1945).
8. **I want nothing more than to speak simply, to be granted that grace.** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Poem "An Old Man on the River Bank", Logbook II (1945).
9. **What has passed has passed rightly.** (1 · ▲2 ▼1) — Poem "Summer Solstice".
10. **It is no great thing to climb, but it is very hard to change.** (1 · ▲2 ▼1) — Poem "Piazza San Nicolò", Logbook I (1940).
11. **Wherever I travel, Greece wounds me.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Poem "In the Manner of G. S.".
12. **If pain is human, we are not human beings only in order to suffer.** (0 · ▲1 ▼1) — Poem "An Old Man on the River Bank", Logbook II (1945).

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.