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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.

— Czesław Miłosz Daylight (1953)

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More quotes by Czesław Miłosz

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.

All Czesław Miłosz quotes →

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Czesław Miłosz (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.