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A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death.

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
True
People
Opium
Solace
Nothingness
Belief
Death

More quotes by Czeslaw Milosz

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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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Do not feel safe. The poet remembers. You can kill one, but another is born. The words are written down, the deed, the date.
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We have become indifferent to content, and react, not even to form, but to technique, to technical efficiency itself.
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When I curse Fate, it's not me, but the earth in me.
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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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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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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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Language is the only homeland.
Czeslaw Milosz
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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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All of us yearn for the highest wisdom, but we have to rely on ourselves in the end.
Czeslaw Milosz
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The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.
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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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.
Czeslaw Milosz
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You see how I try To reach with words What matters most And how I fail.
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.
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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Poetry is a dividend from what you know and what you are.
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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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
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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