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We're extremely fortunate not to know precisely the kind of world we live in. One would have to live a long, long time, unquestionably longer than the world itself.

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
Longer
Live
Long
Kind
Would
Unquestionably
Time
Precisely
World
Extremely
Fortunate

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Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still
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I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.
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When I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past. When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it.
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Sometimes I write quickly, sometimes I spend several weeks on a single poem. I would really love for readers not to be able to guess which of the poems took so much work!
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Generally speaking, life is so rich and full of variety you have to remember all the time that there is a comical side to everything.
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After every war someone has to tidy up.
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Everyone needs solitude, especially a person who is used to thinking about what she experiences. Solitude is very important in my work as a mode of inspiration, but isolation is not good in this respect. I am not writing poetry about isolation.
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I have sympathy for young people, for their growing pains, but I balk when these growing pains are pushed into the foreground, when you make these young people the only vehicles of lifes wisdom.
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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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This terrifying world is not devoid of charms, of the mornings that make waking up worthwhile.
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I'm old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.
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All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination. Even the richest, most surprising and wild imagination is not as rich, wild and surprising as reality. The task of the poet is to pick singular threads from this dense, colorful fabric.
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Nothing's a gift, it's all on loan
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Carry on, then, if only for the moment that it takes a tiny galaxy to blink!
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No one in my family has ever died of love. What happened, happened, but nothing myth-inspiring.
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Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.
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I am who I am. A coincidence no less unthinkable than any other.
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Somewhere out there the world must have an end.
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Is a decision made in advance really any kind of choice?
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Poetic talent doesn't operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry.
Wislawa Szymborska