Czesław Miłosz quotes - page 3

What I'm saying here is not, I agree, poetry, as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly, under unbearable duress and only with the hope that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument. (Czesław Miłosz)
We go down with the bells ringing in all the sunken cities. Forgotten, we are greeted by the embassies of the dead, While your endless flowing carries us on and on; And neither is nor was. The moment only, eternal. View quote
Czesław Miłosz
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. View quote
Czesław Miłosz
The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them. View quote
Czesław Miłosz
Not that I want to be a god or a hero. Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone. View quote
Czesław Miłosz
A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death - the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders we are not going to be judged. View quote
Czesław Miłosz
Love means to look at yourself The way one looks at distant things For you are only one thing among many. View quote
Czesław Miłosz
All of us yearn for the highest wisdom, but we have to rely on ourselves in the end. View quote
Czesław Miłosz
What is poetry which does not save nations or people? View quote
Czesław Miłosz
It is sweet to think I was a companion in an expedition that never ends. View quote
Czesław Miłosz
I imagine the earth when I am no more: Women's dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley. Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born, Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights. (Czesław Miłosz)
All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence. Yet I believe you, messengers. View quote
Czesław Miłosz
You see how I try To reach with words What matters most And how I fail. View quote
Czesław Miłosz
I swear, there is in me no wizardry of word. I speak to you with silence like a cloud or a tree. View quote
Czesław Miłosz
Long into the night we were walking on the Piazza del Duomo. He: That I was too politicized. And I answered him more or less as follows:If you have a nail in your shoe, what then? Do you love that nail? Same with me. I am for the moon amid the vineyards When you see high up the snow on the Alps. View quote
Czesław Miłosz
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. View quote
Czesław Miłosz
The masses in highly industrialized countries like England, the United States, or France are largely de-Christianized. Technology, and the way of life it produces, undermines Christianity far more effectively than do violent measures. View quote
Czesław Miłosz
All my life to pretend this world of theirs is mine And to know such pretending is disgraceful. But what can I do? Suppose I suddenly screamed And started to prophesy. No one would hear me. Their screens and microphones are not for that. View quote
Czesław Miłosz
During the thirty years I have spent abroad I have felt I was more privileged than my Western colleagues, whether writers or teachers of literature, for events both recent and long past took in my mind a sharply delineated, precise form. Western audiences confronted with poems or novels written in Poland, Czechoslovakia or Hungary, or with films produced there, possibly intuit a similarly sharpened consciousness, in a constant struggle against limitations imposed by censorship. Memory thus is our force, it protects us against a speech entwining upon itself like the ivy when it does not find a support on a tree or a wall. View quote
Czesław Miłosz
They say somebody has invented you but to me this does not sound convincing for humans invented themselves as well. View quote
Czesław Miłosz
- How is it, Chloe, that your pretty skirt Is torn so badly by the winds that hurt Real people, you who, in eternity, sing The hours, sun in your hair appearing And disappearing? How is that your breasts Are pierced by shrapnel, and the oak groves burn, While you, charmed, caring not at all, turn To run through forests of machinery and concrete And haunt us with the echoes of your feet? (Czesław Miłosz)
I will neither resurrect the past nor return. Sleep, Romeo, Juliet, on your headrest of stone feathers. I won't raise your bound hands from the ashes. Let the cat visit the deserted cathedrals, its pupil flashing on the altars. Let an owl nest on the dead ogive. View quote
Czesław Miłosz
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. View quote
Czesław Miłosz
Until, when all is legend And many years have passed, On a great Campo di Fiori Rage will kindle at a poet's word. View quote
Czesław Miłosz
I think that I am here, on this earth, To present a report on it, but to whom I don't know. View quote
Czesław Miłosz