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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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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
Strength
Shore
Shall
Received
Wisdom
Cover
Break
Apart
Faith
Wave
Young
Heavy
World
Skills
Shores
Tears
Trace

More quotes by 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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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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We have become indifferent to content, and react, not even to form, but to technique, to technical efficiency itself.
Czeslaw Milosz
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At every sunrise I renounce the doubts of night and greet the new day of a most precious delusion.
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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A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death.
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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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
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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.
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 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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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
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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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The true enemy of man is generalization.
Czeslaw Milosz
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What has no shadow has no strength to live.
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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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
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All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence.
Czeslaw Milosz
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The revolt against one's environment is usually 'shame' of one's environment.
Czeslaw Milosz