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

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

More quotes by Czeslaw Milosz

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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.
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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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The child who dwells inside us trusts that there are wise men somewhere who know the truth.
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What has no shadow has no strength to live.
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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 true enemy of man is generalization.
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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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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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What is poetry which does not save nations or people?
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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 this enigmatic impulse that does not allow one to settle down in the achieved, the finished? I think it is a quest for reality.
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From life, from the apple cut by the flaming knife, what grain will be saved? My son, believe me, nothing remains, Only adult toil, the furrow of fate in the palm. Only toil, Nothing more.
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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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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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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 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.
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The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.
Czeslaw Milosz
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When I curse Fate, it's not me, but the earth in me.
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The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.
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