In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.
CZESLAW MILOSZWhen I curse Fate, it’s not me, but the earth in me.
More Czeslaw Milosz Quotes
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At every sunrise I renounce the doubts of night and greet the new day of a most precious delusion.
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The revolt against one’s environment is usually ‘shame’ of one’s environment.
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You see how I try To reach with words What matters most And how I fail.
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What has no shadow has no strength to live.
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Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth. Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality. Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself, so the weary travelers may find repose.
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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.
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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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Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.
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All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence.
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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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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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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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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 am not my own friend.Time cuts me in two.
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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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A weak human mercy walks in the corridors of hospitals and is like a half-thawed winter.
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Be young forever, seasons of the earth.
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What is poetry which does not save nations or people?
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Yet falling in love is not the same as being able to love.
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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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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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I 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.
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Language is the only homeland.
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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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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