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

More quotes by Czeslaw Milosz

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All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence.
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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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On the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
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A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death.
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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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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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When I curse Fate, it's not me, but the earth in me.
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Poetry is a dividend from what you know and what you are.
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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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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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The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.
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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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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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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.
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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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It is sweet to think I was a companion in an expedition that never ends
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Be young forever, seasons of the earth.
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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.
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It was only toward the middle of the twentieth century that the inhabitants of many European countries came, in general unpleasantly, to the realization that their fate could be influenced directly by intricate and abstruse books of philosophy.
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The true enemy of man is generalization.
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