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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Czeslaw Milosz

Image
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.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
The soul exceeds its circumstances.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
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.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
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
Image
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.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
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.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
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.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
We have become indifferent to content, and react, not even to form, but to technique, to technical efficiency itself.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
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
Image
If I am all mankind, are they themselves without me?
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
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.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
Be young forever, seasons of the earth.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
On the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
I am composed of contradictions, which is why poetry is a better form for me than philosophy
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
Do not feel safe. The poet remembers. You can kill one, but another is born. The words are written down, the deed, the date.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
What has no shadow has no strength to live.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
The revolt against one's environment is usually 'shame' of one's environment.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person.
Czeslaw Milosz
Image
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