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

More quotes by 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.
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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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Language is the only homeland.
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The soul exceeds its circumstances.
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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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The child who dwells inside us trusts that there are wise men somewhere who know the truth.
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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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Be young forever, seasons of the earth.
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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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All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence.
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The partition separating life from death is so tenuous. The unbelievable fragility of our organism suggests a vision on a screen: a kind of mist condenses itself into a human shape, lasts a moment and scatters.
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What is poetry which does not save nations or people?
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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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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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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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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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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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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A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death.
Czeslaw Milosz