You who think of us: they lived only in delusion, Know that we the People of the Book, will never die!
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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On the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
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The true enemy of man is generalization.
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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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If I am all mankind, are they themselves without me?
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When I die, I will see the lining of the world. The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset.
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The partition separating life from death is so tenuous. The unbelievable fragility of our organism suggests a vision on a screen: a kind of mist condenses itself into a human shape, lasts a moment and scatters.
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I liked beaches, swimming pools, and clinics for there they were the bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. I pitied them and myself, but this will not protect me. The word and the thought are over.
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Be young forever, seasons of the earth.
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The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history.
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When I curse Fate, it’s not me, but the earth in me.
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The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.
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What has no shadow has no strength to live.
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Not that I want to be a god or a hero. Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone.
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I have defined poetry as a ‘passionate pursuit of the Real.
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He returns years later, has no demands. He wants only one, most precious thing: To see, purely and simply, without name, Without expectations, fears, or hopes, At the edge where there is no I or not-I.
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The soul exceeds its circumstances.
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Consolation Calm down. Both your sins and your good deeds will be lost in oblivion.
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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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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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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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Poetry is a dividend from what you know and what you are.
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You see how I try To reach with words What matters most And how I fail.
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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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When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.
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Yet falling in love is not the same as being able to love.
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The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person, for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors, and invisible guests come in and out at will.
CZESLAW MILOSZ