Even the worst book can give us something to think about.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAWhen I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past. When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it.
More Wislawa Szymborska Quotes
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All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination.
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I’m working on the world, revised, improved edition, featuring fun for fools blues for brooders, combs for bald pates, tricks for old dogs.
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I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
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Poorly prepared for the dignity of life, I barely keep up with the pace of the action imposed. Reality demands.
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No one feels good at four in the morning. If ants feel good at four in the morning —three cheers for the ants.
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Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice.
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Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.
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Loveless work, boring work, work valued only because others haven’t got even that much, however loveless and boring – this is one of the harshest human miseries.
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I’m fighting against the bad poet who is prone to using too many words.
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I’d have to be really quick to describe clouds – a split second’s enough for them to start being something else.
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And whatever I do will become forever what I’ve done.
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Carry on, then, if only for the moment that it takes a tiny galaxy to blink!
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Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.
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We’re extremely fortunate not to know precisely the kind of world we live in. One would have to live a long, long time, unquestionably longer than the world itself.
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Though I may deny poets their monopoly on inspiration, I still place them in a select group of Fortune’s darlings.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA