Czeslaw Milosz: Trending quotes (page 3)

“But where is our, dear to us, mortality?
Where is time that both destroys and saves us?
This is too difficult for me. Peace eternal
Could have no mornings and no evenings,
Such a deficiency speaks against it.”

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

“Learning

To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life.”

“Yet falling in love is not the same as being able to love.”

“Language is the only homeland.”

“The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.”

“You see how I try
To reach with words
What matters most
And how I fail.”

“Consolation

Calm down. Both your sins and your good deeds will be lost in oblivion.”

“When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.”

“What has no shadow has no strength to live.”

“The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history.”

“The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.”

“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.”

“The true enemy of man is generalization.”

“The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person…”

“I have defined poetry as a 'passionate pursuit of the Real.”

“It is sweet to think I was a companion in an expedition that never ends”

“I am composed of contradictions, which is why poetry is a better form for me than philosophy”

“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.”