“Our snakes have shed their lightning,
our apes their flights of fancy”

— Wisława Szymborska

"An Unexpected Meeting"
Poems New and Collected (1998), Salt (1962)
Context: Our snakes have shed their lightning,
our apes their flights of fancy,
our peacocks have renounced their plumes.
The bats flew out of our hair long ago. We fall silent in mid-sentence,
all smiles, past help.
Our humans
don't know how to talk to one another.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Our snakes have shed their lightning, our apes their flights of fancy" by Wisława Szymborska?

Wisława Szymborska 92

Polish writer 1923–2012

Related quotes

“Yesterday is skin on snake, to be shed many times.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Beyond The Highland Mist

“Who questions with a snake if the snake sting?
Who reasons of the lightning if it burn?
While these things are, deadly will these things be;
And so the curse that comes of cursed faith.”

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic

John Knox as portrayed in Bothwell : A Tragedy (1874) Act I, Sc. 2.
Bothwell : A Tragedy (1874)
Context: Sins are sin-begotten, and their seed
Bred of itself and singly procreative;
Nor is God served with setting this to this
For evil evidence of several shame,
That one may say, Lo now! so many are they;
But if one, seeing with God-illumined eyes
In his full face the encountering face of sin,
Smite once the one high-fronted head, and slay,
His will we call good service. For myself,
If ye will make a counsellor of me,
I bid you set your hearts against one thing
To burn it up, and keep your hearts on fire,
Not seeking here a sign and there a sign,
Nor curious of all casual sufferances,
But steadfast to the undoing of that thing done
Whereof ye know the being, however it be,
And all the doing abominable of God.
Who questions with a snake if the snake sting?
Who reasons of the lightning if it burn?
While these things are, deadly will these things be;
And so the curse that comes of cursed faith.

“The oppressed martyrs of our culture have shed blood that nourish the red tulips of our nation.”

Mahmud Tarzi (1865–1933) Afghan writer

An Afghan Intellect By Yama Atta & Hashmat Haidari http://www.afghanmagazine.com/articles/tarzi.html Link

“Make no mistake
She sheds her skin like a snake
On the dirty road to fame.”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

"There She Goes (A Little Heartache)"
Lyrics and poetry

“Time engraves our faces with all the tears we have not shed.”

Natalie Clifford Barney (1876–1972) writer and salonist

As quoted in The Amazon of Letters, Ch. 10 (1976) by George Wickes

“Wasn't writing a kind of soaring, an achievable form of flight, of fancy, of the imagination?”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

“Some might think that the creativity, imagination, and flights of fancy that give my life meaning are insanity.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

“The Jews caused us a great injustice, the greatest injustice. They have expelled our people, stolen our land, shed our brothers' blood, and are still shedding blood, and there should be no contact between them and us…. we will not agree to meet with them until our problem with the Zionist entity and those Westerners and Christians who support them, is solved.”

Yusuf Qaradawi (1926) Egyptian imam

Sheikh Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi against Including Jews in Dialogue between Religions http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/94.htm May 2004.
Diaglogue among religions with Jews

“We have fought for our land, we have fought for our sovereignty, small as we are we have won our independence and we are prepared to shed our blood…. So, Blair keep your England, and let me keep my Zimbabwe.”

Robert Mugabe (1924–2019) former President of Zimbabwe

Speech at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg (2 September 2002), quoted in John Battersby and Andrew Grice, "Anti-West anger at summit as Mugabe rounds on Blair", The Independent, 3 September 2002, p. 1.
2000s, 2000-2004

“This snake becomes the adversary of Being. There's the snake that bites you in the jungle. Then there's the snake that lives in your enemy. And then there's the snake that lives in your family. And then there's the snake that lives in you. And that snake that's in you, it's a psychological phenomena. It's equivalent to transcendent evil itself, the thing that inhabits every person. It's associated with knowledge of our vulnerability that gives us this constant capacity for evil.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

“Our snakes have shed their lightning,our apes their flights of fancy”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Wisława Szymborska 92

Related quotes

Related topics

“Our snakes have shed their lightning,
our apes their flights of fancy”