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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.

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
Achieved
Impulse
Finished
Allow
Enigmatic
Reality
Quests
Doe
Quest
Think
Settle
Thinking
Settling

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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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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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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The true enemy of man is generalization.
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The soul exceeds its circumstances.
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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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All of us yearn for the highest wisdom, but we have to rely on ourselves in the end.
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The revolt against one's environment is usually 'shame' of one's environment.
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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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All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence.
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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.
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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.
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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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The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person.
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A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death.
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If I am all mankind, are they themselves without me?
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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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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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Forget the suffering You caused others. Forget the suffering Others caused you. The waters run and run, Springs sparkle and are done, You walk the earth you are forgetting.
Czeslaw Milosz
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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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