Quote

The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person.

Czeslaw Milosz

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Poetry
Purpose
Difficult
Persons
Person
Remind
Remain

More quotes by Czeslaw Milosz

Image
In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
The true enemy of man is generalization.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
At every sunrise I renounce the doubts of night and greet the new day of a most precious delusion.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The soul exceeds its circumstances.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
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
Image
It is sweet to think I was a companion in an expedition that never ends
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
The child who dwells inside us trusts that there are wise men somewhere who know the truth.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
The revolt against one's environment is usually 'shame' of one's environment.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
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
Image
All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
Be young forever, seasons of the earth.
Czeslaw Milosz