Get to know other worlds, if only for comparison.
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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I am a tarsier and a tarsier’s son, the grandson and great-grandson of tarsiers, a tiny creature, made up of two pupils and whatever simply could not be left out.
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Even a graphomaniac is an extremely complicated person.
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I’m one-time-only to the marrow of my bones.
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Even the worst book can give us something to think about.
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Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still.
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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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Though I may deny poets their monopoly on inspiration, I still place them in a select group of Fortune’s darlings.
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I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
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Even boredom should be described with gusto. How many things are happening on a day when nothing happens?
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You can find the entire cosmos lurking in its least remarkable objects.
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Sometimes I write quickly, sometimes I spend several weeks on a single poem. I would really love for readers not to be able to guess which of the poems took so much work!
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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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Dying – you can’t do that to a cat.
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Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.
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They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one’s behind me, anyway.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA






