Wisława Szymborska quotes - page 6

Solitude is very important in my work as a mode of inspiration, but isolation is not good in this respect. I am not writing poetry about isolation. (Wisława Szymborska)
Sometimes I really have a spiritual need to say something more general about the world, and sometimes something personal. View quote
Wisława Szymborska
I'm working on the world, revised, improved edition, featuring fun for fools blues for brooders, combs for bald pates, tricks for old dogs. View quote
Wisława Szymborska
I am a tarsier and a tarsier's son, the grandson and great-grandson of tarsiers, a tiny creature, made up of two pupils and whatever simply could not be left out... View quote
Wisława Szymborska
Something doesn't start at its usual time. Something doesn't happen as it should. Someone was always, always here, then suddenly disappeared and stubbornly stays disappeared. View quote
Wisława Szymborska
And whatever I do will become forever what I've done. View quote
Wisława Szymborska
Get to know other worlds, if only for comparison. View quote
Wisława Szymborska
Nothing's a gift, it's all on loan. View quote
Wisława Szymborska
I don't know the role I'm playing. I only know it's mine, non-convertible. View quote
Wisława Szymborska
No one feels good at four in the morning. If ants feel good at four in the morning -three cheers for the ants. View quote
Wisława Szymborska
Nothing's a gift, it's all on loan. Out of every hundred people, those who always know better fifty-two. (Wisława Szymborska)
Even a graphomaniac is an extremely complicated person. View quote
Wisława Szymborska
Existentialists are monumentally and monotonously serious; they don't like to joke. View quote
Wisława Szymborska
It's a well-known fact: in order to follow doctor's orders, you have to be healthy as a horse. View quote
Wisława Szymborska
They say the first love's most important. That's very romantic, but not my experience. View quote
Wisława Szymborska
Contemporary poets are skeptical and suspicious even, or perhaps especially, about themselves. They publicly confess to being poets only reluctantly, as if they were a little ashamed of it. But in our clamorous times it's much easier to acknowledge your faults, at least if they're attractively packaged, than to recognize your own merits, since these are hidden deeper and you never quite believe in them yourself. View quote
Wisława Szymborska
There's simply too much fuss about myself. View quote
Wisława Szymborska
Poorly prepared for the dignity of life, I barely keep up with the pace of the action imposed. Reality demands. View quote
Wisława Szymborska
Get to know other worlds, if only for comparison. I am near, too near for him to dream of me. View quote
Wisława Szymborska
No one in my family has ever died of love. What happened, happened, but nothing myth-inspiring. View quote
Wisława Szymborska
No other sense can make up for your missing sense of taking part. Even sight heightened to become all-seeing will do you no good without a sense of taking part. You shall not enter, you have only a sense of what the sense should be, only its seed, imagination. (Wisława Szymborska)
Our stockpile of antiquity grows constantly, it's overflowing, reckless squatters jostle for a place in history, hordes of sword fodder, Hector's nameless extras, no less brave than he, thousands upon thousands of singular faces, each the first and last for all time, in each a pair of inimitable eyes. How easy it was to live not knowing this, so sentimental, so spacious. View quote
Wisława Szymborska
He has only just learned to tell dreams from waking; only just realized that he is he; only just whittled with his hand né fin a flint, a rocket ship; easily drowned in the ocean's teaspoon, not even funny enough to tickle the void: sees only with his eyes; hears only with his ears; his speech's personal best is the conditional; he uses his reason to pick holes in reason. In short, he's next to to one, but his head's full of freedom, omniscience and the Being beyond his foolish meat - did you ever! View quote
Wisława Szymborska
Gone, lost, scattered to the four winds. It still surprises me how little now remains, one first person sing., temporarily declined in human form, just now making such a fuss about a blue umbrella left yesterday on a bus. View quote
Wisława Szymborska
I felt age within me. Distance. The futility of wandering. Torpor. I looked back setting my bundle down. I looked back not knowing where to set my foot. Serpents appeared on my path, spiders, field mice, baby vultures. They were neither good nor evil now - every living thing was simply creeping or hopping along in the mass panic. View quote
Wisława Szymborska