Quote

Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.

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
Else
Nothing
Men
Clutch
Illusions
Illusion
Hold

More quotes by 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
The soul exceeds its circumstances.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
All of us yearn for the highest wisdom, but we have to rely on ourselves in the end.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
You see how I try To reach with words What matters most And how I fail.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
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.
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
The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person.
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
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
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
At every sunrise I renounce the doubts of night and greet the new day of a most precious delusion.
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
Be young forever, seasons of the earth.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
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
Image
I am composed of contradictions, which is why poetry is a better form for me than philosophy
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
The revolt against one's environment is usually 'shame' of one's environment.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
The true enemy of man is generalization.
Czeslaw Milosz