Love means to look at yourself The way one looks at distant things For you are only one thing among many.
CZESLAW MILOSZI 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.
More Czeslaw Milosz Quotes
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The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
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 MILOSZ -
You see how I try To reach with words What matters most And how I fail.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
Poetry is news brought to the mountains by a unicorn and an echo.
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?
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
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.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
The child who dwells inside us trusts that there are wise men somewhere who know the truth.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
A man should not love the moon. An ax should not lose weight in his hand. His garden should smell of rotting apples, And grow a fair amount of nettles.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
The revolt against one’s environment is usually ‘shame’ of one’s environment.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
Do not feel safe. The poet remembers. You can kill one, but another is born. The words are written down, the deed, the date.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
Be young forever, seasons of the earth.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
It is sweet to think I was a companion in an expedition that never ends.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
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.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
You who think of us: they lived only in delusion, Know that we the People of the Book, will never die!
CZESLAW MILOSZ