Human material seems to have one major defect: it does not like to be considered merely as human material. It finds it hard to endure the feeling that it must resign itself to passive acceptance of changes introduced from above.
CZESLAW MILOSZForget the suffering You caused others. Forget the suffering Others caused you. The waters run and run, Springs sparkle and are done, You walk the earth you are forgetting.
More Czeslaw Milosz Quotes
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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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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 -
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.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence.
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 -
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 -
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?
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
It was only toward the middle of the twentieth century that the inhabitants of many European countries came, in general unpleasantly, to the realization that their fate could be influenced directly by intricate and abstruse books of philosophy.
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 -
I am not my own friend.Time cuts me in two.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
Our memory is childish and it saves only what we need.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
It is impossible to communicate to people who have not experienced it the undefinable menace of total rationalism.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
Forget the suffering You caused others. Forget the suffering Others caused you. The waters run and run, Springs sparkle and are done, You walk the earth you are forgetting.
CZESLAW MILOSZ