It is sweet to think I was a companion in an expedition that never ends.
CZESLAW MILOSZWhen I curse Fate, it’s not me, but the earth in me.
More Czeslaw Milosz Quotes
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I knew that I would speak in the language of the vanquished No more durable than old customs, family rituals, Christmas tinsel, and once a year the hilarity of carols.
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I have defined poetry as a ‘passionate pursuit of the Real.
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You see how I try To reach with words What matters most And how I fail.
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Be young forever, seasons of the earth.
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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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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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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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All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence.
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Human material seems to have one major defect: it does not like to be considered merely as human material. It finds it hard to endure the feeling that it must resign itself to passive acceptance of changes introduced from above.
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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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Poetry is news brought to the mountains by a unicorn and an echo.
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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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Yet falling in love is not the same as being able to love.
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The true enemy of man is generalization.
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In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.
CZESLAW MILOSZ