Czeslaw Milosz Quotes
In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.
The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history.
The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person, for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors, and invisible guests come in and out at will.
Not that I want to be a god or a hero. Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone.
Do not feel safe. The poet remembers. You can kill one, but another is born. The words are written down, the deed, the date.
I am composed of contradictions, which is why poetry is a better form for me than philosophy
The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person.
The death of a man is like the fall of a mighty nation That had valiant armies, captains, and prophets, And wealthy ports and ships all over the seas.
At every sunrise I renounce the doubts of night and greet the new day of a most precious delusion.
A day so happy. Fog lifted early. I worked in the garden. Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers. There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess. I know no one worth my envying him.
Forget the suffering You caused others. Forget the suffering Others caused you. The waters run and run, Springs sparkle and are done, You walk the earth you are forgetting.
I imagine the earth when I am no more: Women's dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley. Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born, Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.
They used to pour millet on graves or poppy seeds To feed the dead who would come disguised as birds. I put this book here for you, who once lived So that you should visit us no more.
A man should not love the moon. An ax should not lose weight in his hand. His garden should smell of rotting apples, And grow a fair amount of nettles.
Two attributes of a poet, avidity of the eye and the desire to describe that which he sees.
I was left behind with the immensity of existing things. A sponge, suffering because it cannot saturate itself; a river, suffering because reflections of clouds and trees are not clouds and trees.
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?
I think that I am here, on this earth, to present a report on it, but to whom I don't know. As if I were sent so that whatever takes place has meaning because it changes into memory.
I've always regretted that I'm made of contradictions. But, if contradiction is impossible to overcome, we have to accept both its ends.
When I die, I will see the lining of the world. The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset.
It is impossible to communicate to people who have not experienced it the undefinable menace of total rationalism.
Love means to look at yourself The way one looks at distant things For you are only one thing among many.
The child who dwells inside us trusts that there are wise men somewhere who know the truth.
You who think of us: they lived only in delusion... Know that we the People of the Book, will never die!
We have become indifferent to content, and react, not even to form, but to technique, to technical efficiency itself.
Learning To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life.
From life, from the apple cut by the flaming knife, what grain will be saved? My son, believe me, nothing remains, Only adult toil, the furrow of fate in the palm. Only toil, Nothing more.
I knew that I would speak in the language of the vanquished No more durable than old customs, family rituals, Christmas tinsel, and once a year the hilarity of carols.
For a country without a past is nothing, a word That, hardly spoken, loses its meaning, A perishable wall destroyed by flame, An echo of animal emotions.
