Quote

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.

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
Cutting
Grain
Furrow
Nothing
Apples
Flaming
Believe
Adult
Palm
Life
Saved
Palms
Son
Knife
Adults
Knives
Fate
Toil
Remains
Apple

More quotes by Czeslaw Milosz

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The child who dwells inside us trusts that there are wise men somewhere who know the truth.
Czeslaw Milosz
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Do not feel safe. The poet remembers. You can kill one, but another is born. The words are written down, the deed, the date.
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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.
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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 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
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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.
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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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What is poetry which does not save nations or people?
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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.
Czeslaw Milosz
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When I curse Fate, it's not me, but the earth in me.
Czeslaw Milosz
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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.
Czeslaw Milosz
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A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death.
Czeslaw Milosz
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The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person.
Czeslaw Milosz
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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.
Czeslaw Milosz
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The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.
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.
Czeslaw Milosz
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I liked beaches, swimming pools, and clinics for there they were the bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. I pitied them and myself, but this will not protect me. The word and the thought are over.
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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 weak human mercy walks in the corridors of hospitals and is like a half-thawed winter.
Czeslaw Milosz
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We have become indifferent to content, and react, not even to form, but to technique, to technical efficiency itself.
Czeslaw Milosz