Quote

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.

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
Tree
Existing
Suffering
River
Left
Trees
Cannot
Clouds
Saturate
Things
Reflection
Sponge
Rivers
Sponges
Behinds
Reflections
Behind
Immensity

More quotes by Czeslaw Milosz

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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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I am composed of contradictions, which is why poetry is a better form for me than philosophy
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A weak human mercy walks in the corridors of hospitals and is like a half-thawed winter.
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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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The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.
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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.
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The revolt against one's environment is usually 'shame' of one's environment.
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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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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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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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What is poetry which does not save nations or people?
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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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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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Be young forever, seasons of the earth.
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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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It is sweet to think I was a companion in an expedition that never ends
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You see how I try To reach with words What matters most And how I fail.
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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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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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All of us yearn for the highest wisdom, but we have to rely on ourselves in the end.
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