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The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.

Czeslaw Milosz

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Czeslaw Milosz
Age: 93 †
Born: 1911
Born: June 30
Died: 2004
Died: August 14
Diplomat
Essayist
Pedagogue
Poet
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Clarksburg
West Virginia
Miłosz
Czelaw Milosz
Tell
Stories
Remembrance
Longer
Story
Living
Speak

More quotes by Czeslaw Milosz

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Do not feel safe. The poet remembers. You can kill one, but another is born. The words are written down, the deed, the date.
Czeslaw Milosz
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The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person.
Czeslaw Milosz
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A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death.
Czeslaw Milosz
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The partition separating life from death is so tenuous. The unbelievable fragility of our organism suggests a vision on a screen: a kind of mist condenses itself into a human shape, lasts a moment and scatters.
Czeslaw Milosz
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The child who dwells inside us trusts that there are wise men somewhere who know the truth.
Czeslaw Milosz
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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.
Czeslaw Milosz
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I liked beaches, swimming pools, and clinics for there they were the bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. I pitied them and myself, but this will not protect me. The word and the thought are over.
Czeslaw Milosz
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In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.
Czeslaw Milosz
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At every sunrise I renounce the doubts of night and greet the new day of a most precious delusion.
Czeslaw Milosz
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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.
Czeslaw Milosz
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What is this enigmatic impulse that does not allow one to settle down in the achieved, the finished? I think it is a quest for reality.
Czeslaw Milosz
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What has no shadow has no strength to live.
Czeslaw Milosz
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Language is the only homeland.
Czeslaw Milosz
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All of us yearn for the highest wisdom, but we have to rely on ourselves in the end.
Czeslaw Milosz
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Consciousness even in my sleep changes primary colors. The features of my face melt like a wax doll in the fire. And who can consent to see in the mirror the mere face of man?
Czeslaw Milosz
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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.
Czeslaw Milosz
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Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.
Czeslaw Milosz
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All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence.
Czeslaw Milosz
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It is sweet to think I was a companion in an expedition that never ends
Czeslaw Milosz
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I am composed of contradictions, which is why poetry is a better form for me than philosophy
Czeslaw Milosz