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What has no shadow has no strength to live.

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
Shadow
Strength
Live

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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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.
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On the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
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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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Language is the only homeland.
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Poetry is a dividend from what you know and what you are.
Czeslaw Milosz
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Every poet depends upon generations who wrote in his native tongue he inherits styles and forms elaborated by those who lived before him. At the same time, though, he feels that those old means of expression are not adequate to his own experience.
Czeslaw Milosz
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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.
Czeslaw Milosz
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The true enemy of man is generalization.
Czeslaw Milosz
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If I am all mankind, are they themselves without me?
Czeslaw Milosz
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Even if that is so, there will remain A word wakened by lips that perish, A tireless messenger who runs and runs Through interstellar fields, through the revolving galaxies, And calls out, protests, screams.
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 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.
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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The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.
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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What is poetry which does not save nations or people?
Czeslaw Milosz
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It was only toward the middle of the twentieth century that the inhabitants of many European countries came, in general unpleasantly, to the realization that their fate could be influenced directly by intricate and abstruse books of philosophy.
Czeslaw Milosz
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Human reason is beautiful and invincible. No bars, no barbed wire, no pulping of books, No sentence of banishment can prevail against it. It puts what should be above things as they are. It does not know Jew from Greek nor slave from master.
Czeslaw Milosz