Poetry is a dividend from what you know and what you are.
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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Two attributes of a poet, avidity of the eye and the desire to describe that which he sees.
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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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Consciousness even in my sleep changes primary colors. The features of my face melt like a wax doll in the fire. And who can consent to see in the mirror the mere face of man?
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If I am all mankind, are they themselves without me?
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.
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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.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
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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On the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
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.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
Be young forever, seasons of the earth.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
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.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
We have become indifferent to content, and react, not even to form, but to technique, to technical efficiency itself.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
I’ve always regretted that I’m made of contradictions. But, if contradiction is impossible to overcome, we have to accept both its ends.
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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.
CZESLAW MILOSZ