The soul exceeds its circumstances.
CZESLAW MILOSZIt was only toward the middle of the twentieth century that the inhabitants of many European countries came, in general unpleasantly, to the realization that their fate could be influenced directly by intricate and abstruse books of philosophy.
More Czeslaw Milosz Quotes
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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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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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Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.
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Our memory is childish and it saves only what we need.
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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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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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Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth.
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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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For a country without a past is nothing, a word That, hardly spoken, loses its meaning, A perishable wall destroyed by flame, An echo of animal emotions.
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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 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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Yet falling in love is not the same as being able to love.
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Language is the only homeland.
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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 revolt against one’s environment is usually ‘shame’ of one’s environment.
CZESLAW MILOSZ