black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

My choices are rejections, since there is no other way, but what I reject is more numerous, denser, more demanding than before. A little poem, a sigh, at the cost of indescribable losses.

Wislawa Szymborska

In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Comedy Element Preserve Tragedy
Any knowledge that doesn’t lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Knowledge Leadership Life Maintain Question Temperature
I’m working on the world, revised, improved edition, featuring fun for fools blues for brooders, combs for bald pates, tricks for old dogs.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Dog Edition Myself Old Revision Work World
We’re extremely fortunate not to know precisely the kind of world we live in. One would have to live a long, long time, unquestionably longer than the world itself.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Fortune Kind Live Precise Question World
Generally speaking, life is so rich and full of variety; you have to remember all the time that there is a comical side to everything.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Comic Remember Rich Talk Variety Yourself
I started earning a living as a poet rather early on.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Live Myself Poet Start
Even boredom should be described with gusto. How many things are happening on a day when nothing happens?
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Boredom Day Description
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.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Death Easy Finding Live Love People True
Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Beginning Book Half Myself Open
I’d have to be really quick to describe clouds – a split second’s enough for them to start being something else.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Cloud Description Enough Myself Quick Start
It’s a well-known fact: in order to follow doctor’s orders, you have to be healthy as a horse.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Doctor Fact Follow Health Order Yourself
Existentialists are monumentally and monotonously serious; they don’t like to joke.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Boredom Existence Joke Monumental Serious
I am a tarsier and a tarsier’s son, the grandson and great-grandson of tarsiers, a tiny creature, made up of two pupils and whatever simply could not be left out.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Creature Myself Simplicity Son
I am who I am. A coincidence no less unthinkable than any other.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Myself Personality Thinking
Memory at last has what I sought.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Last Memories Myself Thinking
It’s just not easy to explain to someone else what you don’t understand yourself.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Easy Explanation Understand Yourself
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.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Animal Appearance Conscious Different Human Oneself Try
Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Beautiful Certain Confidence Life Time
No one in my family has ever died of love. What happened, happened, but nothing myth-inspiring.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Death Family Love Mythical
All is mine but nothing owned, nothing owned for memory, and mine only while I look.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Memories Myself Search
Something doesn’t start at its usual time. Something doesn’t happen as it should. Someone was always, always here, then suddenly disappeared and stubbornly stays disappeared.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Disappear Start Stay Stubborn Time
They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one’s behind me, anyway.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Hard Myself Oneself Sentence
No one feels good at four in the morning. If ants feel good at four in the morning —three cheers for the ants.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Feeling Good Morning Oneself
I’m one-time-only to the marrow of my bones.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Bone Myself Time
When I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past. When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Destroy Future Myself Past Silence Word
I cannot imagine any writer who would not fight for his peace and quiet.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Fight Himself Imagination Myself Peace Quiet
I’m drowning in papers.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Drown Myself One Liner Paper Poet

My choices are rejections, since there is no other way, but what I reject is more numerous, denser, more demanding than before. A little poem, a sigh, at the cost of indescribable losses.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

My choices are rejections, since there is no other way, but what I reject is more numerous, denser, more demanding than before. A little poem, a sigh, at the cost of indescribable losses.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Wislawa Szymborska Quotes