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Czesław Miłosz Quotes

1911–2004 Poland

Czesław Miłosz (30 June 1911 – 14 August 2004) was a Polish poet and essayist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1980.

Poland
Essayists
Nobel laureates
Poets
Political authors

Also known as: Miłosz, Czesław, Ceslaw Milosz, Czeslaw Milosz, Milosz, Ceslaw, The Captive Mind

Random Czesław Miłosz quote

78 quotes

He who invokes history is always secure.
The dead will not rise to witness against him.

Daylight (1953)

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

Hymn of the Pearl (1981)

I was left behind with the immensity of existing things. A sponge, suffering because it cannot saturate itself; a river, suffering because reflections of clouds and trees are not clouds and trees.

Uncollected Poems (1954)

Never has there been a close study of how necessary to a man are the experiences which we clumsily call aesthetic.

The Captive Mind (1953)

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.

Under various names, I have praised only you, rivers!

Hymn of the Pearl (1981)

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

Unattainable Earth (1986)

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.

Daylight (1953)

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

Hymn of the Pearl (1981)

And yet the world is different from what it seems to be
and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings.

Love means to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills —
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.

Rescue (1945)

Masculinity and femininity, elapsed, met in him
And every shame, every grief, every love.

City of My Youth (1984)

They say somebody has invented you
but to me this does not sound convincing
for humans invented themselves as well.

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

Meaning (1991)

Leave
To poets a moment of happiness,
Otherwise your world will perish.

Rescue (1945)

Such seeming nothingness not only lasts but contains within itself enormous energy which is revealed gradually.

You can accuse them of any deeds you like.
Their reply will always be silence.

Daylight (1953)

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

Hymn of the Pearl (1981)

I still think too much about the mothers
And ask what is man born of woman.

Unattainable Earth (1986)

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.

Three Winters (1936)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Czesław Miłosz (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.