This compilation of the best phrases of Mario Benedetti is a tribute to the writer who joined one of the most fertile generations of Uruguayan intellectuals along with Juan Carlos Onetti and Eduardo Galeano.
Mario Benedetti reflects, in a literary work that includes narrative, drama, poetry and essay, his vision of life: profoundly melancholic, irresistibly romantic and politically committed. Find out in the following sentences.
- You can also read: 60 Pablo Neruda phrases about love and life.
Mario Benedetti’s phrases about life
In addition to an excellent writer, he was a teacher of life, because in his phrases we find reflections that become useful teachings. 1. I never thought that there was so much sadness in happiness.
An expression of melancholy that encloses the author’s intellectual complexity, his insatiable search for answers. 2. In certain oases, the desert is just a mirage.
A very Benedictine play on words that plays with opposites and contains a very nice message that will make you think. 3. Never give up, that’s what life is: continue the journey, pursue your dreams…
…unlock time, run through the rubble and uncover the sky.4. Five minutes are enough to live a whole life, that’s how relative time is.
With this phrase about life and time, Mario Benedetti invites us to reflect on the use of our vital experience. 5. There is less time than place, however, there are places that last a minute and for a certain time there is no place.
How many messages in one. The purest Benedetti reflects on the relativity of time and place, which is basically a vital and optimistic attitude . 6. Hatreds vivify and stimulate only if it is one who governs them; they destroy and disrupt when they are the ones who dominate.
It teaches us that we have to dominate the passionsto get everything they can offer us positively. 7. There are few things as deafening as silence.
With this antithesis, Mario Benedetti values everything that silence can express. 8. I believe that life is a parenthesis between two nothings.
Before we were born we did not exist, there is only nothing. After death there is nothing. It is a phrase that shows Benedetti’s atheism. 9. Death takes everything that was not, but we keep everything we had.
A beautiful phrase of contrasts that encourages us to live life to the fullest. A beautiful phrase about life that reproduces the concept of carpe diem . 10. Sometimes I feel unhappy for no reason.
Sadness is something irremediable, and even when there is no cause, we feel prisoners of melancholy. 11. I don’t know if God exists, but if he exists, I know he won’t be bothered by my doubt.
An ironic play on words that reinforces her disbelief of him. 12. Do not believe everything they tell you about the world, I already told you that the world is countless.
The human being is incapable of understanding everything, a humble vision of our immense smallness before the world. 13. We are sadness, that’s why joy is a feat.
This sentence contains his conception of man as a being condemned to be sad, for whom, however, achieving happiness seems like a challenge .14. Melancholia: romantic way of being sad.
A schematic and very useful summary of Benedetti’s personality and his way of seeing life. 15. We all want what cannot be done, we are fanatics of the forbidden.
A reality as a temple that only lucid minds like yours can capture with such simplicity. 16. There are no vaccines against optimism. You have to always look at life with optimism , this is the only possible alternative. 17. After all, death is just a symptom of life.
Perhaps it is the most radically optimistic phrase of Benedetti, because he understands that to die you have to be alive and that is what matters. 18. Perfection is a polished correction of errors.
The only way to reach excellence is through constant and conscientious work. 19. Feelings are innocent like white weapons.
A phrase full of irony that sees feelings as white weapons: they are innocent until someone uses them against others . 20. When hell is others, paradise is oneself.
You have to find in yourself the security and strength to combat the threats of others. 21. Defending joy like a trench.
Defense of joy is one of his best-known poems, an antidote against vital pessimism . 22. That pain does not turn off my rage, that joy does not disarm my love.
Pain and joy are softer ranges of feelings compared to the passion that anger and love awaken in the human being . 23. Who would say, the really weak never give up.
A tribute to all the humble people who, despite adversity, continue to fight. 24. The butterfly will remember forever that it was a worm.
One of his best-known phrases that speaks of the origin of a person, from which it cannot be separated no matter how much it evolves. 25. A pessimist is just a well-informed optimist.
For him, pessimism is a realistic view of life that helps to deal with problems more effectively .26. Reality is a bunch of problems over which no one claims copyright.
A criticism of society because no one assumes responsibility for their actions . 27. One of the most pleasant things in life: seeing how the sun filters through the leaves.
A summary of Benedetti’s vital optimism when he knew how to overcome his melancholic obsessions.
- More reflections: 24 existential questions (deep or silly) to reflect on.
Mario Benedetti phrases of love
Many of his readers were captivated by his poetry thanks to the high dose of romanticism that transpires his verses. Discover the best phrases of love by Mario Benedetti. 28. It’s nice to know that you exist.
One of the best known verses of a beautiful poetry of devotion for her lover From him. 29. His lips were a necessary caress, as she had been able to live without them until now.
An evocation, a lament about the time spent without the presence of the beloved. 30. If life were different and death came then, I would love you today, tomorrow, forever, still. They are the last lines of a very beautiful poem called “Forever”.
Mario Benedetti, with his profoundly melancholic vision of life. | Image from: Social networks. 31. Footsteps are heard from someone who never arrives.
A contradictory metaphor that manages to fill the expression of love that never comes with melancholy. 32. That the world and I really love you, but I always a little more than the world.
A hyperbole in which the poet compares his love with the world to enhance his greatness. 33. Love is a word, a little piece of utopia.
That’s how simple and gigantic at the same time Mario Benedetti saw it, with a mixture of simplicity and ambitious complexity . 34. I don’t know your name, I only know the look with which you tell me.
One of his most famous verses, with a certain Neruda reminiscence, which speaks of the depth of love in the soul . 35. Because you always exist wherever, but you exist better where I want you.
One of Mario Benedetti’s beautiful phrases of love about the need for possession. 36. The caress is a language, if the caresses speak I don’t want them to be silent.
The poet shows his conception of love beyond carnal passion : a sensitive, deep, tactile love. 37. Eternal loves are the shortest.
In the transience of love there is usually a component of passion that makes them unforgettable. 38. I need not to fall into the remote risk of needing you.
is acknowledging ofimplicitly the dependency towards her lover . 39. What good insomnia if I lose sleep over your body.
A poetic phrase of love about the physical passion that awakens love in the poet. 40. If the heart gets bored of wanting, what is it for?
We have to make our heart an inexhaustible source of love . 41. I know that I am going to love you without questions, I know that you are going to love me without answers.
Sometimes in love it is better to love each other without complications, without questions or answers. 42. Because the heaven of having you seems like a fantasy to me.
In this way the poet expresses how incredibly wonderful it is for him to be with his beloved . 43. Where your mouth ends, mine begins there
A beautiful metaphor of all-encompassing love, of the two lovers as one body . 44. I kiss your ear as if I had never kissed another ear.
A very explicit verse that continued in a more subtle way: “That’s why he listens to words I’ve never heard before.” 45. Do not tempt me, because if we are tempted we will not be able to forget.
A fun short phrase of love about temptation and the irresistible desire to fall into it . 46. I wait for you when we look at the night sky: you there, me here.
An optimistic vision of distance in love: the desire to look at the sky and observe beauty despite the pain of separation. 47. You don’t know how much I need your voice…
This is how one of his most beautiful love poems begins, which ends with some forceful verses: “I have already found what I need, and yet, I still miss you!” 48. Then her smile, if it still exists, turns into a rainbow.
From one of her love poems in which she describes the smile of the person she has fallen in love with. 49. And although I have not always understood my faults and my failures, instead I know that in your arms the world makes sense. Love as a weapon against failure and sadness takes shape in these verses. 50. That someone makes you feel things without laying a finger on you, that’s admirable.
Of the importance of love beyond the physical, of the depth of feelings .51. Our relationship was so fleeting that a star saw us and made a wish.
A beautiful short phrase of love with which a brief but intense love is presented. 52. You don’t know how much I appreciate your simple courage to love me.
One of his most reproduced phrases because it expresses the tender admiration for the simplicity that fills people with love. 53. I don’t know why, but today I’ve been missing you.
Even if we think we have forgotten someone, memories always haunt us . 54. They said goodbye and the welcome was already in the goodbye.
Before traumatic separations, we should not focus on what we lose, but on the good that is yet to come. 55. When hatred is loose, one loves in self-defense.Love is the best strategy to defy the hatred that is imposed on us from the outside. 56. In love it is virtuous to be faithful, but not fanatical.
An ironic Benedetti invites us here to live love in a passionate way… with its unpredictable consequences . Mario Benedetti’s phrases about friendship
His conception of love always had such a deep meaning and coated with purity that it ended up becoming an exaltation of friendship. For Benedetti, a lover was a friend, and this is reflected in many of his phrases.
- More phrases: 70 phrases of friendship for true friends.
57. Companera, you know, you can count on me.
Without a doubt, his great defense of love as friendship is this beautiful poetry full of wit . 58. More than kissing her, more than sleeping together, more than anything else, she held my hand and that was love.
For Benedetti , love goes far beyond a physical connection , it is a friendship commitment between two people, two friends, two partners. 59. If I dwell in your memory I will not be alone.
A deep reflection on the importance of remembrance, memory and thoughts. 60. If I love you it is because you are my lover, my accomplice and everything.
Here he introduces a new term that perfectly sums up his ideal of love: complicity .
Mario Benedetti quotes about love, life and friendship. | Image from: Social networks. 61. We all need an accomplice sometime, someone to help us use our hearts. An accomplice is precisely a guide in the complex world of feelings. 62. Ours is that indefinite bond that now unites us.
Friendship is an invisible bond that unites two people for the rest of their lives . 63. I would like to see everything from afar, but with you.
Express the depth of love in one of his beautiful phrases about friendship. 64. Of all those hands, his was the only one that gave me life.
There are people to whom, without knowing very well why we are united in a very special way. 65. The friend came absorbed, without mishaps, and there was no longer talk of death.
From his poem Proximo projimo about friendship and brotherhood . 66. Simply because in the first line I thought of you, friend.
Benedetti dedicates this beautiful poem to his partner with an obvious title: Amiga. 67. Your eyes are my spell against a bad day
The presence of a faithful companion, the power of love, all that can save a bad day . 68. With you I can and with my I want, let’s go together, partner.
From a beautiful friendship poem about camaraderie and shared effort. 69. They suffer from the most horrible variant of loneliness.
There is nothing worse thanfeel the loneliness in oneself . 70. A confession: loneliness has stopped hurting me.
A declaration of intentions from someone who has stopped suffering and faces life from another perspective. 71. You arrived early to a death that was not yours.
He dedicates this poem entitled A Roque to a revolutionary friend of his . 72. My friend, who is a poet, I summon all poets.
This is how this poem begins where a poet friend asks him to write a poem about the atomic bomb, and he ends: “I will tell my poet friend that I can’t.” 73. Sincerity will always lead us to hate ourselves a little.
The dangers of being honest is that you tell the truth. A very ironic phrase about friendship .74. That’s what it’s all about, coinciding with people who make you see things that you don’t see…
“…That they teach you to look with different eyes”, continued the poet. 75. With you I have no need to live defensively.
That is the best way to feel happy with someone: when love turns into friendship . 76. This is not an affair, nor a program, nor a courtship. But it is more than a friendship.
In this way, Mario Benedetti captures the fluidity of human relationships when there are feelings involved. 77. I like people who are able to criticize me constructively and directly, I call these my friends.
An honest and sincere phrase about friendship, aboutwhat it means to be frankly a friend . 78. I would like to spend the rest of my life with someone who doesn’t need me at all, but loves me for everything.
When friendship and love are based on the exciting adventure of loving without interest. 79. Every woman has her best friend, her boyfriend and her true love. But she’s lucky if they’re the same person.
When a person becomes both friend and lover , the miracle occurs. 80. I like people who think that teamwork, among friends, produces more than chaotic individual efforts.
Collective work is much more productive than individualism. The best phrases of Mario Benedetti about politics and art
In his youth, the writer was impacted by the Cuban revolution and until his death he was an active defender of the values of the left. He did not stop embodying his political message in many of his writings. 81. Every time the owner of a land says you will have to go over my corpse, he must take into account that sometimes they happen.
On the inevitability of some revolutions when it comes to justice . 82. To kill a man of peace they had to become a nightmare.
A poem written in the heat of the seizure of the presidential palace in Chile in 1973 and the assassination of his friend Salvador Allende . 83. In Latin American politics the thing is not to be able or to want but to fuck.
An ironic and eschatological but clarifying example of defining politics in Latin America. 84. A torturer does not redeem himself by committing suicide, but something is something.
A sincere and honest statement about his belief that torturers deserve the worst punishment . 85. Modern man must beware of two dangers: from the right when he is right-handed, and from the left when he is sinister.
When the right shows his authentic character and the left succumbs to the perversion of his principles , totalitarianism appears . 86. Just when we thought we had all the answers, all the questions changed.
One of his most famous phrases that speaks of the constant need to ask questions adapting to social changes. 87. Artigas is one of the most progressive figures in America, three years before Marxa was born he had already written the first agrarian reform.
A praise of the River Plate soldier and statesman Jose Gervasio Artigas who participated in the war of independence. 88. Honesty, come to me, and even if you want I will not let you leave me.
The poet claims the assistance of honesty as the most important artistic, political and vital value . 89. The one who cheats is him because he doesn’t have the courage to be honest.
Benedetti was always a staunch fighter against corruption, deceit and lies, which he considered capital sins in politics. 90. Peace is accepting the values of the other.
His political sense was based on the fact that the values of the left have to be based on tolerance and coexistence that lead to pacifism . 91. A lawyer with a portfolio can steal more than a thousand armed men.
You have to be wary of white-collar thieves, bankers and solicitors. 92. The outlined plan is freedom.
This is the maximum value that for Benedetti must govern life, politics and poetry. 93. When the Japanese acquired Rockefeller Center…
…I knew that the most subtle, the sweet revenge of Hiroshima had finally begun. 94. Perhaps my only notion of homeland is this urge to say We. A distrustful and pessimistic look towards patriotism in a very stimulating poetry that helps to reflect. 95. But here below, the available hunger resorts to the bitter fruit of what others decide.
From the group of poems in El sur also exists, which later became musician Joan Manuel Serrat. 96. When I have worries, fears or a love story, I am lucky to be able to transform it into a poem.
Poetry is something as simple as the ability to transmit the emotions that we carry inside. 97. Octavio says that in Latin America, we intellectuals are the catastrophe…
“…Among other things because we defend the revolutions that he doesn’t like”, he says in a poem responding to Octavio Paz . 98. Spain, if any chronicler accuses you of being Manichaean, clumsy, uneducated, ugly… Be welcome to the fiery third world.
A poetry dedicated to Spain and criticizing the vision of the powerful on Latin America. 99. Poetry is the soul of the world This is
how he described, in such a romantic way, what poetry is for him. 100. We have no right to forget, neither the good nor the bad.
And for him, poetry and literature in general are the tools that the writer has to defy oblivion .
- You can also read: 40 unforgettable phrases by Julio Cortazar.
