It is impossible to communicate to people who have not experienced it the undefinable menace of total rationalism.
CZESLAW MILOSZWhat is this enigmatic impulse that does not allow one to settle down in the achieved, the finished? I think it is a quest for reality.
More Czeslaw Milosz Quotes
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When I curse Fate, it’s not me, but the earth in me.
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I liked beaches, swimming pools, and clinics for there they were the bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. I pitied them and myself, but this will not protect me. The word and the thought are over.
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On the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
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I knew that I would speak in the language of the vanquished No more durable than old customs, family rituals, Christmas tinsel, and once a year the hilarity of carols.
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And if there is no lining to the world? If a thrush on a branch is not a sign, But just a thrush on the branch? If night and day Make no sense following each other?
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Be young forever, seasons of the earth.
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Poetry is a dividend from what you know and what you are.
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Do not feel safe. The poet remembers. You can kill one, but another is born. The words are written down, the deed, the date.
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Yet falling in love is not the same as being able to love.
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The death of a man is like the fall of a mighty nation That had valiant armies, captains, and prophets, And wealthy ports and ships all over the seas.
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Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth. Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality. Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself, so the weary travelers may find repose.
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The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.
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Poetry is news brought to the mountains by a unicorn and an echo.
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Love means to look at yourself The way one looks at distant things For you are only one thing among many.
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I was left behind with the immensity of existing things. A sponge, suffering because it cannot saturate itself; a river, suffering because reflections of clouds and trees are not clouds and trees.
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At every sunrise I renounce the doubts of night and greet the new day of a most precious delusion.
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What has no shadow has no strength to live.
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Consciousness even in my sleep changes primary colors. The features of my face melt like a wax doll in the fire. And who can consent to see in the mirror the mere face of man?
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What is this enigmatic impulse that does not allow one to settle down in the achieved, the finished? I think it is a quest for reality.
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When I die, I will see the lining of the world. The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset.
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Two attributes of a poet, avidity of the eye and the desire to describe that which he sees.
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It is sweet to think I was a companion in an expedition that never ends.
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Forget the suffering You caused others. Forget the suffering Others caused you. The waters run and run, Springs sparkle and are done, You walk the earth you are forgetting.
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The revolt against one’s environment is usually ‘shame’ of one’s environment.
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Our memory is childish and it saves only what we need.
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Even if that is so, there will remain A word wakened by lips that perish, A tireless messenger who runs and runs Through interstellar fields, through the revolving galaxies, And calls out, protests, screams.
CZESLAW MILOSZ