I have defined poetry as a ‘passionate pursuit of the Real.
CZESLAW MILOSZAnd 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.
More Czeslaw Milosz Quotes
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Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth. Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality. Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself, so the weary travelers may find repose.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
The revolt against one’s environment is usually ‘shame’ of one’s environment.
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Language is the only homeland.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence.
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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.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
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.
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.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
Love means to look at yourself The way one looks at distant things For you are only one thing among many.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
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.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
What is poetry which does not save nations or people?
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
Consolation Calm down. Both your sins and your good deeds will be lost in oblivion.
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From life, from the apple cut by the flaming knife, what grain will be saved? My son, believe me, nothing remains, Only adult toil, the furrow of fate in the palm. Only toil, Nothing more.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
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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Two attributes of a poet, avidity of the eye and the desire to describe that which he sees.
CZESLAW MILOSZ