Quote

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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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
Primaries
Consciousness
Primary
Fire
Features
Sleep
Mirror
Doll
Face
Mirrors
Melt
Faces
Changes
Dolls
Even
Mere
Consent
Men
Colors
Like
Color

More quotes by Czeslaw Milosz

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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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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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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.
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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 living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.
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Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.
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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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Be young forever, seasons of the earth.
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It is sweet to think I was a companion in an expedition that never ends
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.
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Forget the suffering You caused others. Forget the suffering Others caused you. The waters run and run, Springs sparkle and are done, You walk the earth you are forgetting.
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.
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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 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
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The revolt against one's environment is usually 'shame' of one's environment.
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.
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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On the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
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A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death.
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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