The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history.
CZESLAW MILOSZI am not my own friend.Time cuts me in two.
More Czeslaw Milosz Quotes
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The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.
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Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth.
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The true enemy of man is generalization.
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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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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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Poetry is a dividend from what you know and what you are.
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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?
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What is poetry which does not save nations or people?
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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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We have become indifferent to content, and react, not even to form, but to technique, to technical efficiency itself.
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Our memory is childish and it saves only what we need.
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A weak human mercy walks in the corridors of hospitals and is like a half-thawed winter.
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You see how I try To reach with words What matters most And how I fail.
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Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy, Repeats while he binds his tomatoes: No other end of the world will there be, No other end of the world will there be.
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Consolation Calm down. Both your sins and your good deeds will be lost in oblivion.
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Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.
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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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The revolt against one’s environment is usually ‘shame’ of one’s environment.
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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.
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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.
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A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death.
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When I curse Fate, it’s not me, but the earth in me.
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All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence.
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I was left behind with the immensity of existing things. A sponge, suffering because it cannot saturate itself; a river, suffering because reflections of clouds and trees are not clouds and trees.
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Poetry is news brought to the mountains by a unicorn and an echo.
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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.
CZESLAW MILOSZ