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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.

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
Whatever
Reports
Place
Sent
Earth
Memory
Think
Changes
Thinking
Meaning
Memories
Present
Takes
Report

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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The revolt against one's environment is usually 'shame' of one's environment.
Czeslaw Milosz
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Be young forever, seasons of the earth.
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
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The true enemy of man is generalization.
Czeslaw Milosz
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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.
Czeslaw Milosz
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If I am all mankind, are they themselves without me?
Czeslaw Milosz
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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.
Czeslaw Milosz
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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.
Czeslaw Milosz
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Poetry is a dividend from what you know and what you are.
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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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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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
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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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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.
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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Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.
Czeslaw Milosz
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I am composed of contradictions, which is why poetry is a better form for me than philosophy
Czeslaw Milosz
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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.
Czeslaw Milosz
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What has no shadow has no strength to live.
Czeslaw Milosz