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Loveless work, boring work, work valued only because others haven't got even that much, however loveless and boring - this is one of the harshest human miseries.

Wislawa Szymborska

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Wislawa Szymborska
Age: 88 †
Born: 1923
Born: July 2
Died: 2012
Died: February 1
Critic
Essayist
Literary Critic
Mechanic
Poet
Translator
Writer
Kornik
Maria Wisława Anna Szymborska
Szymborska
Others
Loveless
Human
Miseries
Humans
Valued
Even
Misery
Work
Boring
Much
Havens
Haven
However
Harshest

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I am who I am. A coincidence no less unthinkable than any other.
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This terrifying world is not devoid of charms, of the mornings that make waking up worthwhile.
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Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice.
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In the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence, not anyone's existence in this world.
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They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one's behind me, anyway.
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Animals don't even try to look any different from what nature intended. They humbly wear their shells, scales, spines, plumes, pelts, and down. ... The conscious impulse to change one's appearance is found only among humans.
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I am a tarsier and a tarsier's son, the grandson and great-grandson of tarsiers, a tiny creature, made up of two pupils and whatever simply could not be left out.
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The joy of writing. The power of preserving. Revenge of a mortal hand.
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It's just not easy to explain to someone else what you don't understand yourself.
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Dying - you can't do that to a cat.
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Even a graphomaniac is an extremely complicated person.
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History counts its skeletons in round numbers. A thousand and one remains a thousand, as though the one had never existed: an imaginary embryo, an empty cradle, ... emptiness running down steps toward the garden, nobody's place in line.
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Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still
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Get to know other worlds, if only for comparison.
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Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.
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At the very beginning of my creative life I loved humanity. I wanted to do something good for mankind. Soon I understood that it isn't possible to save mankind.
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Even the worst book can give us something to think about.
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There is so much Everything that Nothing is hidden quite nicely
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Something doesn't start at its usual time. Something doesn't happen as it should. Someone was always, always here, then suddenly disappeared and stubbornly stays disappeared.
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Well, one is inspired by the whole of life, one's own and somebody else's. You know how sometimes you hear great music, and music is completely untranslatable into words, into any words. A certain tension that is born when one listens to music could aid you in expressing something absolutely different.
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