The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history.
CZESLAW MILOSZI’ve always regretted that I’m made of contradictions. But, if contradiction is impossible to overcome, we have to accept both its ends.
More Czeslaw Milosz Quotes
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It is sweet to think I was a companion in an expedition that never ends.
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Poetry is news brought to the mountains by a unicorn and an echo.
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On the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
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You see how I try To reach with words What matters most And how I fail.
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The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.
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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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A weak human mercy walks in the corridors of hospitals and is like a half-thawed winter.
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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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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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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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When I die, I will see the lining of the world. The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset.
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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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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.
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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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Consolation Calm down. Both your sins and your good deeds will be lost in oblivion.
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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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At every sunrise I renounce the doubts of night and greet the new day of a most precious delusion.
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The soul exceeds its circumstances.
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The true enemy of man is generalization.
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What is poetry which does not save nations or people?
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The partition separating life from death is so tenuous. The unbelievable fragility of our organism suggests a vision on a screen: a kind of mist condenses itself into a human shape, lasts a moment and scatters.
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If I am all mankind, are they themselves without me?
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Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.
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Irony is the glory of slaves.
CZESLAW MILOSZ