Learning To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life.
CZESLAW MILOSZHe 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.
More Czeslaw Milosz Quotes
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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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At every sunrise I renounce the doubts of night and greet the new day of a most precious delusion.
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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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Language is the only homeland.
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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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If I am all mankind, are they themselves without me?
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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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The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.
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Our memory is childish and it saves only what we need.
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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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The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history.
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The true enemy of man is generalization.
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What is this enigmatic impulse that does not allow one to settle down in the achieved, the finished? I think it is a quest for reality.
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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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Love means to look at yourself The way one looks at distant things For you are only one thing among many.
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What is poetry which does not save nations or people?
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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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The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.
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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 soul exceeds its circumstances.
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The death of a man is like the fall of a mighty nation That had valiant armies, captains, and prophets, And wealthy ports and ships all over the seas.
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What has no shadow has no strength to live.
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You see how I try To reach with words What matters most And how I fail.
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I am composed of contradictions, which is why poetry is a better form for me than philosophy.
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Two attributes of a poet, avidity of the eye and the desire to describe that which he sees.
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Be young forever, seasons of the earth.
CZESLAW MILOSZ