Consolation Calm down. Both your sins and your good deeds will be lost in oblivion.
CZESLAW MILOSZWhen a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.
More Czeslaw Milosz Quotes
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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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In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.
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From life, from the apple cut by the flaming knife, what grain will be saved? My son, believe me, nothing remains, Only adult toil, the furrow of fate in the palm. Only toil, Nothing more.
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Our memory is childish and it saves only what we need.
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Poetry is news brought to the mountains by a unicorn and an echo.
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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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Not that I want to be a god or a hero. Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone.
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Language is the only homeland.
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It was only toward the middle of the twentieth century that the inhabitants of many European countries came, in general unpleasantly, to the realization that their fate could be influenced directly by intricate and abstruse books of philosophy.
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All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence.
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Yet falling in love is not the same as being able to love.
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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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I am not my own friend.Time cuts me in two.
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We have become indifferent to content, and react, not even to form, but to technique, to technical efficiency itself.
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All of us yearn for the highest wisdom, but we have to rely on ourselves in the end.
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The child who dwells inside us trusts that there are wise men somewhere who know the truth.
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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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A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death – the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders we are not going to be judged.
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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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The soul exceeds its circumstances.
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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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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 has no shadow has no strength to live.
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Do you know how it is when one wakes at night suddenly and asks, listening to the pounding heart: what more do you want, insatiable?
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If I am all mankind, are they themselves without me?
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Learning To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life.
CZESLAW MILOSZ