In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.
CZESLAW MILOSZI 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.
More Czeslaw Milosz Quotes
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Consolation Calm down. Both your sins and your good deeds will be lost in oblivion.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death – the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders we are not going to be judged.
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And if there is no lining to the world? If a thrush on a branch is not a sign, But just a thrush on the branch? If night and day Make no sense following each other?
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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.
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The revolt against one’s environment is usually ‘shame’ of one’s environment.
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The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history.
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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.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
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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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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Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
I am composed of contradictions, which is why poetry is a better form for me than philosophy.
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Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy, Repeats while he binds his tomatoes: No other end of the world will there be, No other end of the world will there be.
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The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.
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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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Learning To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life.
CZESLAW MILOSZ