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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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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
Death
Screen
Partition
Moments
Screens
Fragility
Human
Philosophical
Separating
Humans
Shape
Organism
Kind
Shapes
Suggests
Life
Vision
Mist
Condenses
Lasts
Organisms
Scatters
Moment
Unbelievable
Tenuous

More quotes by Czeslaw Milosz

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You see how I try To reach with words What matters most And how I fail.
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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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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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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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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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The child who dwells inside us trusts that there are wise men somewhere who know the truth.
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At every sunrise I renounce the doubts of night and greet the new day of a most precious delusion.
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A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death.
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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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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.
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The revolt against one's environment is usually 'shame' of one's environment.
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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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
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I am composed of contradictions, which is why poetry is a better form for me than philosophy
Czeslaw Milosz
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The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.
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.
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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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What is poetry which does not save nations or people?
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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A weak human mercy walks in the corridors of hospitals and is like a half-thawed winter.
Czeslaw Milosz