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 MILOSZWhat 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.
More Czeslaw Milosz Quotes
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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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The true enemy of man is generalization.
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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.
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It is impossible to communicate to people who have not experienced it the undefinable menace of total rationalism.
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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.
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Even if that is so, there will remain A word wakened by lips that perish, A tireless messenger who runs and runs Through interstellar fields, through the revolving galaxies, And calls out, protests, screams.
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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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Do you know how it is when one wakes at night suddenly and asks, listening to the pounding heart: what more do you want, insatiable?
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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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Irony is the glory of slaves.
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Yet falling in love is not the same as being able to love.
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If I am all mankind, are they themselves without me?
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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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The child who dwells inside us trusts that there are wise men somewhere who know the truth.
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The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.
CZESLAW MILOSZ