The revolt against one’s environment is usually ‘shame’ of one’s environment.
CZESLAW MILOSZI 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.
More Czeslaw Milosz Quotes
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You see how I try To reach with words What matters most And how I fail.
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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.
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The soul exceeds its circumstances.
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Yet falling in love is not the same as being able to love.
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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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What has no shadow has no strength to live.
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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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In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.
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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.
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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 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.
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All of us yearn for the highest wisdom, but we have to rely on ourselves in the end.
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Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth.
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Do not feel safe. The poet remembers. You can kill one, but another is born. The words are written down, the deed, the date.
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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.
CZESLAW MILOSZ