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.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAI’m working on the world, revised, improved edition, featuring fun for fools blues for brooders, combs for bald pates, tricks for old dogs.
More Wislawa Szymborska Quotes
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Loveless work, boring work, work valued only because others haven’t got even that much, however loveless and boring – this is one of the harshest human miseries.
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All is mine but nothing owned, nothing owned for memory, and mine only while I look.
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Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.
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Is a decision made in advance really any kind of choice?
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Whatever inspiration is, it’s born from a continuous “I don’t know.
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Whether you want it or not, your genes have a political past, your skin a political tone. your eyes a political color. You walk with political steps on political ground.
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I don’t know the role I’m playing. I only know it’s mine, non-convertible.
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When I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past. When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it.
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Though I may deny poets their monopoly on inspiration, I still place them in a select group of Fortune’s darlings.
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Poetic talent doesn’t operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry.
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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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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.
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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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I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.
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Even the worst book can give us something to think about.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA