I was left behind with the immensity of existing things. A sponge, suffering because it cannot saturate itself; a river, suffering because reflections of clouds and trees are not clouds and trees.
CZESLAW MILOSZLearning To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life.
More Czeslaw Milosz Quotes
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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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Yet falling in love is not the same as being able to love.
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Language is the only homeland.
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It is sweet to think I was a companion in an expedition that never ends.
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I have defined poetry as a ‘passionate pursuit of the Real.
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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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In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.
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The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history.
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Poetry is a dividend from what you know and what you are.
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Poetry is news brought to the mountains by a unicorn and an echo.
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I think that I am here, on this earth, to present a report on it, but to whom I don’t know. As if I were sent so that whatever takes place has meaning because it changes into memory.
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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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The child who dwells inside us trusts that there are wise men somewhere who know the truth.
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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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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 MILOSZ