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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

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It's true that what is morbid is highly valued today, and so you may think that I am only joking or that I've devised just one more means of praising Art with the help of irony.
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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?
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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.
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It is sweet to think I was a companion in an expedition that never ends
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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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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.
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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.
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Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.
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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.
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If I am all mankind, are they themselves without me?
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A weak human mercy walks in the corridors of hospitals and is like a half-thawed winter.
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All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence.
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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.
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I am composed of contradictions, which is why poetry is a better form for me than philosophy
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A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death.
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All of us yearn for the highest wisdom, but we have to rely on ourselves in the end.
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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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When I curse Fate, it's not me, but the earth in me.
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The true enemy of man is generalization.
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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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