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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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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
Remind
Remain
Poetry
Purpose
Difficult
Persons
Person

More quotes by 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.
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Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth. Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality. Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself, so the weary travelers may find repose.
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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.
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The soul exceeds its circumstances.
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The true enemy of man is generalization.
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 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.
Czeslaw Milosz
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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.
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A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death.
Czeslaw Milosz
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All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence.
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Be young forever, seasons of the earth.
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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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.
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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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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Language is the only homeland.
Czeslaw Milosz
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I have no wisdom, no skills, and no faith but I received strength, it tears the world apart. I shall break, a heavy wave, against its shores and a young wave will cover my trace.
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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We have become indifferent to content, and react, not even to form, but to technique, to technical efficiency itself.
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