Quote

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

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
Grows
Garden
Hands
Weight
Men
Moon
Nettles
Love
Amount
Rotting
Grow
Apples
Lose
Fairs
Loses
Smell
Hand
Fair

More quotes by Czeslaw Milosz

Image
Poetry is a dividend from what you know and what you are.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
A weak human mercy walks in the corridors of hospitals and is like a half-thawed winter.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
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
Image
All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
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.
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
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 child who dwells inside us trusts that there are wise men somewhere who know the truth.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
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
Image
It is sweet to think I was a companion in an expedition that never ends
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
What is poetry which does not save nations or people?
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
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
Image
At every sunrise I renounce the doubts of night and greet the new day of a most precious delusion.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
I am composed of contradictions, which is why poetry is a better form for me than philosophy
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
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
Image
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
Image
On the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
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