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If I am all mankind, are they themselves without me?

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
Mankind
Without

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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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The child who dwells inside us trusts that there are wise men somewhere who know the truth.
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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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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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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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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.
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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 revolt against one's environment is usually 'shame' of one's environment.
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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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The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.
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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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Language is the only homeland.
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Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.
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A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death.
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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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The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person.
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What is poetry which does not save nations or people?
Czeslaw Milosz
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I am composed of contradictions, which is why poetry is a better form for me than philosophy
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What has no shadow has no strength to live.
Czeslaw Milosz