Czeslaw Milosz Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• 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

  Philosophical, Vision, Lasts

  11 Copy quote

• There was a time when only wise books were read helping us to bear our pain and misery. This, after all, is not quite the same as leafing through a thousand works fresh from psychiatric clinics. And yet the world is different from what it seems to be and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings.

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Wise, Pain, Book

  Czeslaw Milosz, “Ars Poetica?”

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Gratitude, Appreciation, Cheer

  19 Copy quote

• 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

  Beautiful, Book, Greek

  Czeslaw Milosz, “Incantation”

  6 Copy quote

• If I am all mankind, are they themselves without me?

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Mankind, Ifs

  Czeslaw Milosz, “Study Of Loneliness”

  6 Copy quote

• I've always regretted that I'm made of contradictions. But, if contradiction is impossible to overcome, we have to accept both its ends.

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Overcoming, Impossible, Contradiction

  9 Copy quote

• Human material seems to have one major defect: it does not like to be considered merely as human material. It finds it hard to endure the feeling that it must resign itself to passive acceptance of changes introduced from above.

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Acceptance, Feelings, Doe

  "The Captive Mind" by Czeslaw Milosz, as translated by Jane Zielonko, 1990.

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  Moon, Men, Garden

  "King Popeil and Other Poems (Should, Should Not)". Book by Czeslaw Milosz, 1962.

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  Book, Bird, Poppies

  Czeslaw Milosz, “Dedication”

  11 Copy quote

• We have become indifferent to content, and react, not even to form, but to technique, to technical efficiency itself.

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Technique, Crafts, Efficiency

  8 Copy quote

• He returns years later, has no demands. He wants only one, most precious thing: To see, purely and simply, without name, Without expectations, fears, or hopes, At the edge where there is no I or not-I.

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Names, Years, Expectations

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Reality, Thinking, Quests

  Czeslaw Milosz's Nobel lecture, www.nobelprize.org. December 8, 1980.

  4 Copy quote

• You who think of us: they lived only in delusion... Know that we the People of the Book, will never die!

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Book, Thinking, People

  Czeslaw Milosz (2017). “Selected and Last Poems 1931-2004”, p.187, Penguin UK

  7 Copy quote

• The vineyard country, russet, reddish, carmine-brown in this season.
  A blue outline of hills above a fertile valley.
  It's warm as long as the sun does not set, in the shade cold returns.
  A strong sauna and then swimming in a pool surrounded by trees.
  Dark redwoods, transparent pale-leved birches.
  In their delicate network, a sliver of the moon.
  I describe this for I have learned to doubt philosophy
  And the visible world is all that remains.

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Country, Strong, Philosophy

  9 Copy quote

• Our memory is childish and it saves only what we need.

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Memories, Needs, Our Memories

  "Yellow Bicycle" by Czeslaw Milosz, 1986.

  7 Copy quote

• When I die, I will see the lining of the world. The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset.

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Sunset, Bird, Mountain

  Czeslaw Milosz, “Meaning”

  9 Copy quote

• And now I am ready to keep running When the sun rises beyond the borderlands of death. I already see mountain ridges in the heavenly forest Where, beyond every essence, a new essence awaits.

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Running, Essence, Memorial

  Czeslaw Milosz, “Winter”

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Country, Wall, Past

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Running, Messengers, Fields

  Czeslaw Milosz, “Meaning”

  4 Copy quote

• It's true that what is morbid is highly valued today, and so you may think that I am only joking or that I've devised just one more means of praising Art with the help of irony.

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Art, Mean, Thinking

  Czeslaw Milosz (2017). “Selected and Last Poems 1931-2004”, p.126, Penguin UK

  4 Copy quote

• Under various names, I have praised only you, rivers!
  You are milk and honey and love and death and dance.
  From a spring in hidden grottoes, seeping from mossy rocks,
  Where a goddess pours live water from a pitcher,
  At clear streams in the meadow, where rills murmur underground,
  Your race and my race begin, and amazement, and quick passage.

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Spring, Race, Rocks

  "Hymn of the Pearl". Book by Czeslaw Milosz, 1981.

  4 Copy quote

• When I curse Fate, it's not me, but the earth in me.

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Fate, Earth, Curse

  Czeslaw Milosz (2017). “Selected and Last Poems 1931-2004”, p.185, Penguin UK

  4 Copy quote

• Poetry is a dividend from what you know and what you are.

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Poetry Is, Knows, Dividends

  5 Copy quote

• A weak human mercy walks in the corridors of hospitals and is like a half-thawed winter.

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Winter, Half, Mercy

  "Before Majesty" by Czesław Miłosz, 1978.

  4 Copy quote

• Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet Yet is not a prophet, for he's much too busy, Repeats while he binds his tomatoes: No other end of the world will there be, No other end of the world will there be.

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Men, White, Would Be

  Czeslaw Milosz, “A Song On The End Of The World”

  4 Copy quote

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