The partition separating life from death is so tenuous. The unbelievable fragility of our organism suggests a vision on a screen: a kind of mist condenses itself into a human shape, lasts a moment and scatters.
CZESLAW MILOSZYet falling in love is not the same as being able to love.
More Czeslaw Milosz Quotes
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The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person.
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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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A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death.
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What is poetry which does not save nations or people?
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It is impossible to communicate to people who have not experienced it the undefinable menace of total rationalism.
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I am not my own friend.Time cuts me in two.
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A man should not love the moon. An ax should not lose weight in his hand. His garden should smell of rotting apples, And grow a fair amount of nettles.
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Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.
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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.
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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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All of us yearn for the highest wisdom, but we have to rely on ourselves in the end.
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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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The revolt against one’s environment is usually ‘shame’ of one’s environment.
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When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.
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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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For a country without a past is nothing, a word That, hardly spoken, loses its meaning, A perishable wall destroyed by flame, An echo of animal emotions.
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The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person, for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors, and invisible guests come in and out at will.
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I am composed of contradictions, which is why poetry is a better form for me than philosophy.
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I think that I am here, on this earth, to present a report on it, but to whom I don’t know. As if I were sent so that whatever takes place has meaning because it changes into memory.
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I have no wisdom, no skills, and no faith but I received strength, it tears the world apart. I shall break, a heavy wave, against its shores and a young wave will cover my trace.
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I have defined poetry as a ‘passionate pursuit of the Real.
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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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Two attributes of a poet, avidity of the eye and the desire to describe that which he sees.
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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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When I curse Fate, it’s not me, but the earth in me.
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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?
CZESLAW MILOSZ