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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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A day so happy. Fog lifted early. I worked in the garden. Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers. There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess. I know no one worth my envying him.
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What is poetry which does not save nations or people?
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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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In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.
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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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Poetry is a dividend from what you know and what you are.
Czeslaw Milosz
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Language is the only homeland.
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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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Do not feel safe. The poet remembers. You can kill one, but another is born. The words are written down, the deed, the date.
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.
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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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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The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person.
Czeslaw Milosz
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The true enemy of man is generalization.
Czeslaw Milosz
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Be young forever, seasons of the earth.
Czeslaw Milosz
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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.
Czeslaw Milosz
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All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence.
Czeslaw Milosz
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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.
Czeslaw Milosz
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What has no shadow has no strength to live.
Czeslaw Milosz