Czeslaw Milosz: Doing

Czeslaw Milosz was Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator. Explore interesting quotes on doing.
Czeslaw Milosz: 212   quotes 4   likes

“And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels' trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.”

Czeslaw Milosz

"A Song On the End of the World"

Disappointment

“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.”

Czeslaw Milosz

"In Milan" (1955), trans. Czesŀaw Miŀosz and Robert Hass
King Popeil and Other Poems (1962)

Love , Shoe , Night

“Earth, what have I to do with thee?
With your meadows where dumb beasts
Grazed before the deluge without lifting their heads?
What have I to do with your implacable births?
So why this gracious melancholia?
Is it because anger is no use?”

Czeslaw Milosz

"A Portal" (1976), trans. Czesław Miłosz and Robert Hass
Hymn of the Pearl (1981)

Birth , Anger

“Only when two times, two forms are drawn
Together and their legibility
Disturbed, do you see that immortality
Is not very different from the present
And is for its sake. You pick a fragment
Of grenade which pierced the body of a song
On Daphnis and Chloe.”

Czeslaw Milosz

"A Book in the Ruins" (1941), trans. Renata Gorczynski and Robert Hass
Rescue (1945)

Time

“Leaves glowing in the sun, zealous hum of bumblebees,
From afar, from somewhere beyond the river, echoes of lingering voices
And the unhurried sounds of a hammer gave joy not only to me.
Before the five senses were opened, and earlier than any beginning
They waited, ready, for all those who would call themselves mortals,
So that they might praise, as I do, life, that is, happiness.”

Czeslaw Milosz

"An Hour" (1972), trans. Czesŀaw Miłosz and Lillian Vallee
From the Rising of the Sun (1974)

Life , Sense , Waiting , Sun

“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.”

Czeslaw Milosz book The Captive Mind

The Captive Mind (1953)

Life , Way , Country

“I have heard that voice many a time when asleep
and, what is strange, I understood more or less
an order or an appeal in an unearthly tongue:
:day draws near
another one
do what you can.”

Czeslaw Milosz

"On Angels"

Time , Drawing

“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.”

Czeslaw Milosz

"Not Mine"

Life , World

“Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth.
Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality.Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself,
So the weary travelers may find repose in the lie.”

Czeslaw Milosz

"Child of Europe" (1946), trans. Jan Darowski
Daylight (1953)

Truth , Lie , Travel , Tree