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.
CZESLAW MILOSZIt 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.
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.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
Poetry is news brought to the mountains by a unicorn and an echo.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
A man should not love the moon. An ax should not lose weight in his hand. His garden should smell of rotting apples, And grow a fair amount of nettles.
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I am composed of contradictions, which is why poetry is a better form for me than philosophy.
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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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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.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
At every sunrise I renounce the doubts of night and greet the new day of a most precious delusion.
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I have defined poetry as a ‘passionate pursuit of the Real.
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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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Two attributes of a poet, avidity of the eye and the desire to describe that which he sees.
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What has no shadow has no strength to live.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
The revolt against one’s environment is usually ‘shame’ of one’s environment.
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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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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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All of us yearn for the highest wisdom, but we have to rely on ourselves in the end.
CZESLAW MILOSZ