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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.

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

More quotes by Czeslaw Milosz

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What is poetry which does not save nations or people?
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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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All of us yearn for the highest wisdom, but we have to rely on ourselves in the end.
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Be young forever, seasons of the earth.
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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 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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At every sunrise I renounce the doubts of night and greet the new day of a most precious delusion.
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You see how I try To reach with words What matters most And how I fail.
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The soul exceeds its circumstances.
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We have become indifferent to content, and react, not even to form, but to technique, to technical efficiency itself.
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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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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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The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person.
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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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On the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
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Even if that is so, there will remain A word wakened by lips that perish, A tireless messenger who runs and runs Through interstellar fields, through the revolving galaxies, And calls out, protests, screams.
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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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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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The revolt against one's environment is usually 'shame' of one's environment.
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