Wisława Szymborska: Trending quotes

Wisława Szymborska trending quotes. Read the latest quotes in collection
Wisława Szymborska: 184 quotes6 likes

“I'm old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.”

Wisława Szymborska

Source: Nonrequired Reading

“The Three Oddest Words

When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.
When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.
When I pronounce the word nothing,
I make something no nonbeing can hold.”

Wisława Szymborska

“Let the people who never find true love
keep saying that there's no such thing.

Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.”

Wisława Szymborska

Source: View With a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems

“At the very beginning of my creative life I loved humanity. I wanted to do something good for mankind. Soon I understood that it isn’t possible to save mankind.”

Wisława Szymborska

“When it comes, you’ll be dreaming
that you don’t need to breathe;
that breathless silence is
the music of the dark
and it’s part of the rhythm
to vanish like a spark.”

Wisława Szymborska

“I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems.”

Wisława Szymborska

Source: Nothing Twice: Selected Poems

“Somewhere out there the world must have an end.”

Wisława Szymborska

“Dying - you can't do that to a cat.”

Wisława Szymborska

“Loveless work, boring work, work valued only because others haven't got even that much, however loveless and boring--this is one of the harshest human miseries.”

Wisława Szymborska

“It turns out I was right.
But nothing has come of it.”

Wisława Szymborska

“True love. Is it normal
is it serious, is it practical?
What does the world get from two people
who exist in a world of their own?”

Wisława Szymborska

Source: View With a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems

“I am my own obstacle.”

Wisława Szymborska

“It's shocking, the positions,
the unchecked simplicity with which
one mind contrives to fertilize another!
Such positions the Kama Sutra itself doesn't know.”

Wisława Szymborska

"An Opinion Concerning the Question of Pornography"
Poems New and Collected (1998), The People on the Bridge (1986)

“Show me your little poem
and I'll tell you why it wasn't written
any earlier or later than it was.Oh no, you've got me wrong.
Keep your funny piece of paper
with its scribbles.
All I need for my ends
is your layer of dirt
and the long gone
smell of burning.”

Wisława Szymborska

"Archeology"
Poems New and Collected (1998), The People on the Bridge (1986)

“I, the solitary fish, a fish apart
(apart at least from the tree fish and the stone fish),
write, at isolated moments, a tiny fish or two
whose glittering scales, so fleeting,
may only be the dark's embarrassed wink.”

Wisława Szymborska

"In Heraclitus' River"
Poems New and Collected (1998), Salt (1962)

“They were or they weren't.
On an island or not.
An ocean or not an ocean
Swallowed them up or it didn't.”

Wisława Szymborska

"Atlantis"
Poems New and Collected (1998), Calling Out to Yeti (1957)