I have defined poetry as a ‘passionate pursuit of the Real.
CZESLAW MILOSZPoetry is news brought to the mountains by a unicorn and an echo.
More Czeslaw Milosz Quotes
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At every sunrise I renounce the doubts of night and greet the new day of a most precious delusion.
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Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.
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The revolt against one’s environment is usually ‘shame’ of one’s environment.
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Poetry is news brought to the mountains by a unicorn and an echo.
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All of us yearn for the highest wisdom, but we have to rely on ourselves in the end.
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What is poetry which does not save nations or people?
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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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All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence.
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I have no wisdom, no skills, and no faith but I received strength, it tears the world apart. I shall break, a heavy wave, against its shores and a young wave will cover my trace.
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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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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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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.
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I am not my own friend.Time cuts me in two.
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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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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.
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The death of a man is like the fall of a mighty nation That had valiant armies, captains, and prophets, And wealthy ports and ships all over the seas.
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You see how I try To reach with words What matters most And how I fail.
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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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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.
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When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.
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The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person.
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The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history.
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If I am all mankind, are they themselves without me?
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Language is the only homeland.
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Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth.
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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.
CZESLAW MILOSZ