When I curse Fate, it’s not me, but the earth in me.
CZESLAW MILOSZAll of us yearn for the highest wisdom, but we have to rely on ourselves in the end.
More Czeslaw Milosz Quotes
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The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
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 -
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?
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.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
What is poetry which does not save nations or people?
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
Two attributes of a poet, avidity of the eye and the desire to describe that which he sees.
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 -
Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
The soul exceeds its circumstances.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
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 -
You who think of us: they lived only in delusion, Know that we the People of the Book, will never die!
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 -
Every poet depends upon generations who wrote in his native tongue; he inherits styles and forms elaborated by those who lived before him. At the same time, though, he feels that those old means of expression are not adequate to his own experience.
CZESLAW MILOSZ -
At every sunrise I renounce the doubts of night and greet the new day of a most precious delusion.
CZESLAW MILOSZ