Poetry is news brought to the mountains by a unicorn and an echo.
CZESLAW MILOSZOnly 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.
More Czeslaw Milosz Quotes
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I am not my own friend.Time cuts me in two.
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Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.
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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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Poetry is a dividend from what you know and what you are.
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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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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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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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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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Learning To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life.
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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 revolt against one’s environment is usually ‘shame’ of one’s environment.
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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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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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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.
CZESLAW MILOSZ






