Language is the only homeland.
CZESLAW MILOSZEvery 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.
More Czeslaw Milosz Quotes
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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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Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth.
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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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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.
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The child who dwells inside us trusts that there are wise men somewhere who know the truth.
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The soul exceeds its circumstances.
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Not that I want to be a god or a hero. Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone.
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Learning To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life.
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When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.
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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 has no shadow has no strength to live.
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Two attributes of a poet, avidity of the eye and the desire to describe that which he sees.
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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.
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What is poetry which does not save nations or people?
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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