Every poet depends upon generations who wrote in his native tongue; he inherits styles and forms elaborated by those who lived before him. At the same time, though, he feels that those old means of expression are not adequate to his own experience.
CZESLAW MILOSZThe purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person.
More Czeslaw Milosz Quotes
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The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history.
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A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death.
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Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth. Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality. Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself, so the weary travelers may find repose.
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The soul exceeds its circumstances.
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When I curse Fate, it’s not me, but the earth in me.
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What is poetry which does not save nations or people?
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You see how I try To reach with words What matters most And how I fail.
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A weak human mercy walks in the corridors of hospitals and is like a half-thawed winter.
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On the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
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You who think of us: they lived only in delusion, Know that we the People of the Book, will never die!
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The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.
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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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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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Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth.
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Irony is the glory of slaves.
CZESLAW MILOSZ






