Czesław Miłosz quotes - page 5

Czesław Miłosz was a Polish poet, essayist, and Nobel Prize laureate best known for his profound reflections on history, exile, and human nature. His works explore themes of morality, faith, and the complexities of life under totalitarian regimes. He inspired generations of readers with his intellectual depth and moral courage. Here are 123 of his quotes:

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

Czesław Miłosz

Human material seems to have one major defect: it does not like to be considered merely as human material.

Czesław Miłosz

I hear voices, see smiles. I cannot Write anything.

Czesław Miłosz

There were no words In any human tongue To be left for mankind, Mankind who live on.

Czesław Miłosz

We have come by easy stages to a lack of a common system of thought that could unite the peasant cutting his hay, the student poring over formal logic, and the mechanic working in an automobile factory.

Czesław Miłosz

I pass a volcanic park, lie down at a spring, Not knowing how to express what is always and everywhere.

Czesław Miłosz

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

Czesław Miłosz

But precisely because such an analysis of history comes closer to the truth, it is more dangerous. It gives the illusion of full knowledge.

Czesław Miłosz

The bright side of the planet moves toward darkness And the cities are falling asleep, each in its hour, And for me, now as then, it is too much. There is too much world.

Czesław Miłosz

Vulgarized knowledge characteristically gives birth to a feeling that everything is understandable and explained. It is like a system of bridges built over chasms. One can travel boldly ahead over these bridges, ignoring the chasms. It is forbidden to look down into them; but that, alas, does not alter the fact that they exist.

Czesław Miłosz

Under various names, I have praised only you, rivers! You are milk and honey and love and death and dance. From a spring in hidden grottoes, seeping from mossy rocks, Where a goddess pours live water from a pitcher, At clear streams in the meadow, where rills murmur underground, Your race and my race begin, and amazement, and quick passage.

Czesław Miłosz

I think that I am here, on this earth, To present a report on it, but to whom I don't know. As if I were sent so that whatever takes place Has meaning because it changes into memory.

Czesław Miłosz

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. There was no one left Of those who once walked these streets And now they had nothing, except his eyes. Stumbling, he walked and looked, instead of them, On the light they had loved, on the lilacs again in bloom.

Czesław Miłosz

We were permitted to shriek in the tongue of dwarfs and demons But pure and generous words were forbidden Under so stiff a penalty that whoever dared to pronounce one Considered himself as a lost man.

Czesław Miłosz

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.

Czesław Miłosz

How can I live in this country Where the foot knocks against The unburied bones of kin? I hear voices, see smiles. I cannot Write anything; five hands Seize my pen and order me to write The story of their lives and deaths. Was I born to become a ritual mourner? I want to sing of festivities, The greenwood into which Shakespeare Often took me. Leave To poets a moment of happiness, Otherwise your world will perish.

Czesław Miłosz

As long as a society's best minds were occupied by theological questions, it was possible to speak of a given religion as the way of thinking of the whole social organism. All the matters which most actively concerned the people were referred to it and discussed in its terms. But that belongs to a dying era. We have come by easy stages to a lack of a common system of thought that could unite the peasant cutting his hay, the student poring over formal logic, and the mechanic working in an automobile factory. Out of this lack arises the painful sense of detachment or abstraction that oppresses the "creators of culture."

Czesław Miłosz

The pressure of an all-powerful totalitarian state creates an emotional tension in its citizens that determines their acts. When people are divided into "loyalists" and "criminals" a premium is placed on every type of conformist, coward, and hireling; whereas among the "criminals" one finds a singularly high percentage of people who are direct, sincere, and true to themselves.

Czesław Miłosz

He who invokes history is always secure. The dead will not rise to witness against him.You can accuse them of any deeds you like. Their reply will always be silence.Their empty faces swim out of the deep dark. You can fill them with any features desired.Proud of dominion over people long vanished, Change the past into your own, better likeness.

Czesław Miłosz

I still think too much about the mothers And ask what is man born of woman. He curls himself up and protects his head While he is kicked by heavy boots; on fire and running, He burns with bright flame; a bulldozer sweeps him into a clay pit. Her child. Embracing a teddy bear. Conceived in ecstasy.

Czesław Miłosz