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.
CZESLAW MILOSZThe soul exceeds its circumstances.
More Czeslaw Milosz Quotes
-
-
The child who dwells inside us trusts that there are wise men somewhere who know the truth.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
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.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
Love means to look at yourself The way one looks at distant things For you are only one thing among many.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
Not that I want to be a god or a hero. Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
Language is the only homeland.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
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.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
Poetry is a dividend from what you know and what you are.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
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 MILOSZ -
What has no shadow has no strength to live.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
Every poet depends upon generations who wrote in his native tongue; he inherits styles and forms elaborated by those who lived before him. At the same time, though, he feels that those old means of expression are not adequate to his own experience.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
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 -
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.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
The true enemy of man is generalization.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
What is poetry which does not save nations or people?
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
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?
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
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.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
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.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
I imagine the earth when I am no more: Women’s dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley. Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born, Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
When I curse Fate, it’s not me, but the earth in me.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
He returns years later, has no demands. He wants only one, most precious thing: To see, purely and simply, without name, Without expectations, fears, or hopes, At the edge where there is no I or not-I.
CZESLAW MILOSZ