78 quotes
Every poet depends upon generations who wrote in his native tongue; he inherits styles and forms elaborated by those who lived before him. At the same time, though, he feels that those old means of expression are not adequate to his own experience.
Was I born to become
a ritual mourner?
Rescue (1945)
Consciousness even in my sleep changes primary colors.
The features of my face melt like a wax doll in the fire.
And who can consent to see in the mirror the mere face of man?
Bobo's Metamorphosis (1965)
It would be more decorous not to live. To live is not decorous,
Says he who after many years
Returned to the city of his youth.
City of My Youth (1984)
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.
Hymn of the Pearl (1981)
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.
King Popeil and Other Poems (1962)
He doesn't know birds live
In another time than man.
He doesn't know a tree lives
In another time than birds
And will grow slowly
Upward in a gray column
Thinking with its roots
Of the silver of underworld kingdoms.
Daylight (1953)
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.
Rescue (1945)
They are totally unaware of the fact that nothing is their own, that everything is part of their historical formation — their occupations, their clothes, their gestures and expressions, their beliefs and ideas.
The Captive Mind (1953)
On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
A purely physiological study of one particular passer-by in preference to another is meaningless.
The Captive Mind (1953)
Vulgarized knowledge characteristically gives birth to a feeling that everything is understandable and explained.
The Captive Mind (1953)
The pressure of an all-powerful totalitarian state creates an emotional tension in its citizens that determines their acts.
The Captive Mind (1953)
A real "wasteland" is much more terrible than any imaginary one.
The Captive Mind (1953)
I am only a man: I need visible signs.
City Without a Name (1969)
It is impossible to communicate to people who have not experienced it the undefinable menace of total rationalism.
The Captive Mind (1953)
Now I am not ashamed of my defeat.
One murky island with its barking seals
Or a parched desert is enough
To make us say: yes, oui, si.
Hymn of the Pearl (1981)
Greece had to lose, her pure consciousness
had to make our agony only more acute. We needed God loving us in our weakness
and not in the glory of beatitude.
Uncollected Poems (1954)
I swear, there is in me no wizardry of word.
I speak to you with silence like a cloud or a tree.
Wherever he steps, there always
Endures traced in sand
A large-toed footprint
Which clamors to be tried out
By his childish foot arriving
From the virgin forests.
Daylight (1953)