At the very beginning of my creative life I loved humanity. I wanted to do something good for mankind. Soon I understood that it isn’t possible to save mankind.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAEvery beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.
More Wislawa Szymborska Quotes
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I slide my arm from under the sleeper’s head and it is numb, full of swarming pins, on the tip of each, waiting to be counted, the fallen angels sit.
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Let the people who never find true love keep saying that there’s no such thing. Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.
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Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice.
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Animals don’t even try to look any different from what nature intended. They humbly wear their shells, scales, spines, plumes, pelts, and down. The conscious impulse to change one’s appearance is found only among humans.
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I’m drowning in papers.
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Even the worst book can give us something to think about.
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Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.
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Poets yearn, of course, to be published, read, and understood, but they do little, if anything, to set themselves above the common herd and the daily grind.
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The joy of writing. The power of preserving. Revenge of a mortal hand.
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Nothing’s a gift, it’s all on loan.
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This terrifying world is not devoid of charms, of the mornings that make waking up worthwhile.
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I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.
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I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
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No one feels good at four in the morning. If ants feel good at four in the morning —three cheers for the ants.
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When it comes, you’ll be dreaming that you don’t need to breathe; that breathless silence is the music of the dark and it’s part of the rhythm to vanish like a spark.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA






