Czeslaw Milosz Quotes, Thoughts and images
In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.
The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.
The soul exceeds its circumstances.
The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history.
The true enemy of man is generalization.
Not that I want to be a god or a hero. Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone.
What has no shadow has no strength to live.
Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.
The child who dwells inside us trusts that there are wise men somewhere who know the truth.
All of us yearn for the highest wisdom, but we have to rely on ourselves in the end.
The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.
At every sunrise I renounce the doubts of night and greet the new day of a most precious delusion.
Love means to look at yourself The way one looks at distant things For you are only one thing among many.
Be young forever, seasons of the earth.
Language is the only homeland.
It is impossible to communicate to people who have not experienced it the undefinable menace of total rationalism.
Do not feel safe. The poet remembers. You can kill one, but another is born. The words are written down, the deed, the date.
When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.
Learning To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life.
I have defined poetry as a 'passionate pursuit of the Real.
The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person.
You see how I try To reach with words What matters most And how I fail.
Yet falling in love is not the same as being able to love.
Do you know how it is when one wakes at night suddenly and asks, listening to the pounding heart: what more do you want, insatiable?
Irony is the glory of slaves.
Consolation Calm down. Both your sins and your good deeds will be lost in oblivion.
I am composed of contradictions, which is why poetry is a better form for me than philosophy
Poetry is news brought to the mountains by a unicorn and an echo.
On the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
The revolt against one's environment is usually 'shame' of one's environment.
A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death.
What is poetry which does not save nations or people?
Two attributes of a poet, avidity of the eye and the desire to describe that which he sees.
It is sweet to think I was a companion in an expedition that never ends
Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth.
The death of a man is like the fall of a mighty nation That had valiant armies, captains, and prophets, And wealthy ports and ships all over the seas.