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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In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.
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There is so much Everything that Nothing is hidden quite nicely.
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I’d have to be really quick to describe clouds – a split second’s enough for them to start being something else.
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What does the world get from two people/who exist in a world of their own?
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I am who I am. A coincidence no less unthinkable than any other.
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Existentialists are monumentally and monotonously serious; they don’t like to joke.
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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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Even a graphomaniac is an extremely complicated person.
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All imperfection is easier to tolerate if served up in small doses.
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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.
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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.
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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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Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.
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Keep up the good work, if only for a while, if only for the twinkling of a tiny galaxy.
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They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one’s behind me, anyway.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA