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 MILOSZHe 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.
More Czeslaw Milosz Quotes
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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.
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Poetry is news brought to the mountains by a unicorn and an echo.
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I am not my own friend.Time cuts me in two.
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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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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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We have become indifferent to content, and react, not even to form, but to technique, to technical efficiency itself.
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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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I’ve always regretted that I’m made of contradictions. But, if contradiction is impossible to overcome, we have to accept both its ends.
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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.
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Language is the only homeland.
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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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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.
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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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On the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
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The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person.
CZESLAW MILOSZ






