You who think of us: they lived only in delusion, Know that we the People of the Book, will never die!
CZESLAW MILOSZWhen I curse Fate, it’s not me, but the earth in me.
More Czeslaw Milosz Quotes
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Poetry is a dividend from what you know and what you are.
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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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Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.
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Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth.
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And now I am ready to keep running When the sun rises beyond the borderlands of death. I already see mountain ridges in the heavenly forest Where, beyond every essence, a new essence awaits.
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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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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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It is sweet to think I was a companion in an expedition that never ends.
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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 am not my own friend.Time cuts me in two.
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Be young forever, seasons of the earth.
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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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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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A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death.
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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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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.
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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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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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Yet falling in love is not the same as being able to love.
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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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The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person.
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What is poetry which does not save nations or people?
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The revolt against one’s environment is usually ‘shame’ of one’s environment.
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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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It’s true that what is morbid is highly valued today, and so you may think that I am only joking or that I’ve devised just one more means of praising Art with the help of irony.
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The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history.
CZESLAW MILOSZ