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 MILOSZTwo attributes of a poet, avidity of the eye and the desire to describe that which he sees.
More Czeslaw Milosz Quotes
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Our memory is childish and it saves only what we need.
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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.
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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 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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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.
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Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.
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It is sweet to think I was a companion in an expedition that never ends.
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The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history.
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The soul exceeds its circumstances.
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Love means to look at yourself The way one looks at distant things For you are only one thing among many.
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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 am not my own friend.Time cuts me in two.
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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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Be young forever, seasons of the earth.
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The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person.
CZESLAW MILOSZ






