The revolt against one’s environment is usually ‘shame’ of one’s environment.
CZESLAW MILOSZIn a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.
More Czeslaw Milosz Quotes
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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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I liked beaches, swimming pools, and clinics for there they were the bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. I pitied them and myself, but this will not protect me. The word and the thought are over.
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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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I have no wisdom, no skills, and no faith but I received strength, it tears the world apart. I shall break, a heavy wave, against its shores and a young wave will cover my trace.
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Our memory is childish and it saves only what we need.
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All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence.
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It is sweet to think I was a companion in an expedition that never ends.
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It is impossible to communicate to people who have not experienced it the undefinable menace of total rationalism.
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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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And if there is no lining to the world? If a thrush on a branch is not a sign, But just a thrush on the branch? If night and day Make no sense following each other?
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Do you know how it is when one wakes at night suddenly and asks, listening to the pounding heart: what more do you want, insatiable?
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
A weak human mercy walks in the corridors of hospitals and is like a half-thawed winter.
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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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Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.
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At every sunrise I renounce the doubts of night and greet the new day of a most precious delusion.
CZESLAW MILOSZ