Czesław Miłosz Quotes

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

~ Czesław Miłosz

In a room wherepeople unanimously maintaina conspiracy of silence,one word of truthsounds like a pistol shot.

~ Czesław Miłosz

You see how I tryTo reach with wordsWhat matters mostAnd how I fail.

~ Czesław Miłosz

Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year, I felt a door opening in me and I entered the clarity of early morning. One after another my former lives were departing, like ships, together with their sorrow. And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas assigned to my brush came closer, ready now to be described better than they were before.

~ Czesław Miłosz

Horror is the law of the world of living creatures, and civilization is concerned with masking that truth. Literature and art refine and beautify, and if they were to depict reality naked, just as everyone suspects it is (although we defend ourselves against that knowledge), no one would be able to stand it.

~ Czesław Miłosz

I was left behind with the immensity of existing things. A river, suffering because reflections of clouds and tress and not clouds and trees.

~ Czesław Miłosz

The bright side of the planet moves toward darknessAnd the cities are falling asleep, each in its hour,And for me, now as then, it is too much.There is too much world.

~ Czesław Miłosz

Reality calls for a name, for words, but it is unbearable, and if it is touched, if it draws very close, the poet’s mouth cannot even utter a complaint of Job: all art proves to be nothing compared with action. Yet to embrace reality in such a manner that it is preserved in all its old tangle of good and evil, of despair and hope, is possible only thanks to distance, only by soaring above it--but this in turn seems then a moral treason.

~ Czesław Miłosz

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

~ Czesław Miłosz

Language is the only homeland.

~ Czesław Miłosz

Religion used to be the opium of the people. To those suffering humiliation, pain, illness, and serfdom, religion promised the reward of an after life. But now, we are witnessing a transformation, a true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, we are not going to be judged.

~ Czesław Miłosz

Professional Ketman is reasoned thus: since I find myself in circumstances over which I have no control, and since I have but one life and that is fleeting, I should strive to do my best. I am like a crustacean attached to a crag on the bottom of the sea. Over me storms rage and huge ships sail; but my entire effort is concentrated upon clinging to the rock, for otherwise I will be carried off by the waters and perish, leaving no trace behind.

~ Czesław Miłosz

Poetry is an attempt to penetrate the dense reality to find a place where the simplest things look as new as through the eyes of a child.

~ Czesław Miłosz

The work of human thought should withstand the test of brutal, naked reality. If it cannot, it is worthless. Probably only those things are worthwhile which can preserve their validity in the eyes of a man threatened with instant death.

~ Czesław Miłosz

If the world is divided between Fascism and Communism, obviously Fascism must lose since it is the last, desperate refuge of the bourgeoisie

~ Czesław Miłosz

Sceptical Ketman is widely disseminated throughout intellectual circles. One argues that humanity does not know how to handle its knowledge or how to resolve the problems of production and division of goods.

~ Czesław Miłosz

The world deprived of clear-cut outlines, of the up and the down, of good and evil, succumbs to a peculiar nihilization, that is, it loses its colors, so that grayness covers not only things of this earth and of space, but also the very flow of time, its minutes, days and years. Abstract considerations will be of little help, even if they are intended to bring relief. Poetry is quite different. By its very nature it says: All those theories are untrue. Since poetry deals with the singular, not hte general, it can't - if it is good poetry - look at things of this earth other than as colorful, variegated, and exciting, and so, it cannot reduce life, with all its pain, horror, suffering, and ecstasy, to a unified tonality of boredom or complaint. By necessity poetry is therefore on the side of being and against nothingness.

~ Czesław Miłosz

Since poetry deals with the singular, not the general, it cannot - if it is good poetry - look at things of this earth other than as colorful, variegated, and exciting, and so, it cannot reduce life, with all its pain, horror, suffering, and ecstasy, to a unified tonality of boredom and complaint. By necessity poetry is therefore on the side of being and against nothingness.

~ Czesław Miłosz