Book of Mercy Quotes

“When I have not rage or sorrow, and you depart from me, then I am most afraid. When the belly is full, and the mind has its sayings, then I fear for my soul; I rush to you as a child at night breaks into its parents' room. Do not forget me in my satisfaction. When the heart grins at itself, the world is destroyed. And I am found alone with the husks and the shells. Then the dangerous moment comes: I am too great to ask for help. I have other hopes. I legislate from the fortress of my disappointments, with a set jaw. Overthrow this even terror with a sweet remembrance: when I was with you, when my soul delighted you, when I was what you wanted. My heart sings of your longing for me, and my thoughts climb down to marvel at your mercy. I do not fear as you gather up my days. Your name is the sweetness of time, and you carry me close into the night, speaking consolations, drawing down lights from the sky, saying, See how the night has no terror for one who remembers the Name.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

“Blessed is the covenant of love, the covenant of mercy, useless light behind the terror, deathless song in the house of night.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

“Blessed are you who circled desire with a blade, and the garden with fiery swords, and heaven and earth with a word.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

“BLESSED ARE YOU WHO HAS given each man a shield of loneliness so that he cannot forget you. You are the truth of loneliness, and only your name addresses it. Strengthen my loneliness that I may be healed in your name, which is beyond all consolations that are uttered on this earth. Only in your name can I stand in the rush of time, only when this loneliness is yours can I lift my sins toward your mercy.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

“Bind me to your will, bind me with these threads of sorrow, and gather me out of the afternoon where I have torn my soul on twenty monstrous altars, offering all things but myself.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

“I stopped stopping and I stopped starting, and I allowed myself to be crushed by ignorance.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

“Israel, and you who call yourself Israel, the Church that calls itself Israel, and the revolt that calls itself Israel, and every nation chosen to be a nation – none of these lands is yours, all of you are thieves of holiness, all of you at war with Mercy. Who will say it? Will America say, We have stolen it, or France step down? Will Russia confess, or Poland say, We have sinned? All bloated on their scraps of destiny, all swaggering in the immunity of superstition. Ishmael, who was saved in the wilderness, and given shade in the desert, and a deadly treasure under you: has Mercy made you wise? Will Ishmael declare, We are in debt forever? Therefore the lands belong to none of you, the borders do not hold, the Law will never serve the lawless. To every people the land is given on condition. Perceived or not, there is a covenant, beyond the constitution, beyond sovereign guarantee, beyond the nation’s sweetest dreams of itself. The Covenant is broken, the condition is dishonoured, have you not noticed that the world has been taken away? You have no place, you will wander through yourselves from generation to generation without a thread. Therefore you rule over chaos, you hoist your flags with no authority, and the heart that is still alive hates you, and the remnant of Mercy is ashamed to look at you. You decompose behind your flimsy armour, your stench alarms you, your panic strikes at love. The land is not yours, the land has been taken back, your shrines fall through empty air, your tablets are quickly revised, and you bow down in hell beside your hired torturers, and still you count your battalions and crank out your marching songs. Your righteous enemy is listening. He hears your anthem full of blood and vanity, and your children singing to themselves. He has overturned the vehicle of nationhood, he has spilled the precious cargo, and every nation he has taken back. Because you are swollen with your little time. Because you do not wrestle with your angel. Because you dare to live without God. Because your cowardice has led you to believe that the victor does not limp.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

“Here the destruction is subtle, and there the body is torn. Here the breaking is perceived, and there the dead unaware carry their putrid remains. All trade in filth, carry their filth one to another, all walk the streets as though the ground did not recoil, all stretch their necks to bite the air, as though the breath had not withdrawn. The seed bursts without a blessing, and the harvest is gathered as if it were food.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

“Blessed be the covenant of love between what is hidden and what is revealed.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

“I DRAW ASIDE THE CURTAIN. You mock us with the beauty of your world.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

“Listen to the one who has not been wounded, the one who says, 'It is not good that man should be alone.' Recall your longing to the loneliness where it was born, so that when she appears, she will stand before you, not against you. Refine your longing here, in the small silver music of her preparations, under the low-built shelter of repentance.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

“You let me sing, you lifted me up, you have my soul a beam to travel on. You folded your distance back into my heart. You drew the tears back to my eyes. You hid me in the mountain of your word. You gave the injury a tongue to heal itself. You covered my head with my teacher's care, you bound my arm with my grandfather's strength. O beloved speaking, O comfort whispering in the terror, unspeakable explanation of the smoke and cruelty, undo the self-conspiracy, let me dare the boldness of joy.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

“Refine your longing here, in the small silver music of her preparations, under the low-built shelter of repentance.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

“Blessed are you who, among the numberless swept away in terror, permitted a few to suffer carefully.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

“Though I don't believe, I come to you now, and I lift my doubt to your mercy.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

“Blessed is your name. Blessed is the confession of your name.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

“You who pour mercy into hell, sole authority in the highest and the lowest worlds, let your anger disperse the mist in this aimless place, where even my sins fall short of the mark.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

“Awaken me, lord, from the dream of despair, and let me describe my sin. I would not fall into the bewilderment to which your name invited me. I established a court, and I fell asleep under a crown, and I dreamed I could rule the wicked. Awaken me to the homeland of my heart where you are worshipped forever. Awaken me to the mercy of the breath which you breathe into me.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

“In the hopelessness of every other thing, you make your place, you strengthen your presence, and I ask yo bow down before the lord of my life.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

“Blessed are you who speaks to the unworthy.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

“Let him lie among the strings until there is no hope for his daily strategy, until he cries, I am yours, I am your creature.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

“...and tremble before the furnace of light in which you are formed and to which you return, until the time when he suspends his light and withdraws into himself, and there is no world, and there is no soul anywhere.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

“Kindle the darkness of my calling, let me cry to the one who judges the heart in justice and mercy. Arouse my heart again with the limitless breath you breathe into me, arouse the secret from obscurity.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

“Sit in a chair and keep still. Let the dancer's shoulders emerge from your shoulders, the dancer's chest from your chest, the dancer's loins from your loins, the dancer's hips and thighs from yours; and from your silence the throat that makes a sound, and from your bafflement a clear song to which the dancer moves...”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

“In the thin light of hunted pleasure, I become afraid that I will never know my sorrow. I call on you with a cry that concentrates the heart. When will I cry out in gratitude? When will I sing to your mercy?”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

“This is the way we summon one another, but it is not the way we call upon the Name. We stand in rags, we beg for tears to dissolve the immovable landmarks of hatred. How beautiful our heritage, to have this way of speaking to eternity, how bountiful this solitude, surrounded, filled, and mastered by the Name, from which all things arise in splendour, depending one upon the other.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

“O master of my breath, create a man around these nostrils, and gather my heart toward the gravity of your name. Form me again with an utterance and open my mouth with your praise. There is no life but in affirming you, no world to walk on but the one which you create.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

“Sit down, master on this rude chair of praises, and rule my nervous heart with your great decrees of freedom.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

“He fastened his collar to the darkness so he couldn't breathe, and he opened the book in anger to make his payment to the law.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

“SIT IN A CHAIR AND KEEP still. Let the dancer’s shoulders emerge from your shoulders, the dancer’s chest from your chest, the dancer’s loins from your loins, the dancer’s hips and thighs from yours; and from your silence the throat that makes a sound, and from your bafflement a clear song to which the dancer moves, and let him serve God in beauty.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy