Quote

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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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
Country
Wall
Echoes
Emotion
Flame
Loses
Spoken
Animal
Flames
Word
Hardly
Past
Destroyed
Without
Emotions
Perishable
Nothing
Meaning
Echo

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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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It is sweet to think I was a companion in an expedition that never ends
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All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence.
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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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The soul exceeds its circumstances.
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Language is the only homeland.
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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?
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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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At every sunrise I renounce the doubts of night and greet the new day of a most precious delusion.
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When I curse Fate, it's not me, but the earth in me.
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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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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.
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Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.
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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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We have become indifferent to content, and react, not even to form, but to technique, to technical efficiency itself.
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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.
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