Czesław Miłosz > Quotes

“In a room where
people unanimously maintain
a conspiracy of silence,
one word of truth
sounds like a pistol shot.”
― Czesław Miłosz

“Learning

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

“The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.”
― Czesław Miłosz

“A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death - the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders we are not going to be judged.”
― Czesław Miłosz

“Yet falling in love is not the same as being able to love.”
― Czesław Miłosz, Selected Poems Selected Poems

“Not that I want to be a god or a hero. Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone.”
― Czesław Miłosz

“Tomber amoureux. To fall in love. Does it occur suddenly or gradually? If gradually, when is the moment “already”? I would fall in love with a monkey made of rags. With a plywood squirrel. With a botanical atlas. With an oriole. With a ferret. With a marten in a picture. With the forest one sees to the right when riding in a cart to Jaszuny. With a poem by a little-known poet. With human beings whose names still move me. And always the object of love was enveloped in erotic fantasy or was submitted, as in Stendhal, to a “cristallisation,” so it is frightful to think of that object as it was, naked among the naked things, and of the fairy tales about it one invents. Yes, I was often in love with something or someone. Yet falling in love is not the same as being able to love. That is something different.

— Falling in Love, Czeslaw Milosz
”
― Czesław Miłosz

“And Yet the Books

And yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings,
That appeared once, still wet
As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn,
And, touched, coddled, began to live
In spite of fires on the horizon, castles blown up,
Tribes on the march, planets in motion.
“We are,” they said, even as their pages
Were being torn out, or a buzzing flame
Licked away their letters. So much more durable
Than we are, whose frail warmth
Cools down with memory, disperses, perishes.
I imagine the earth when I am no more:
Nothing happens, no loss, it's still a strange pageant,
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.”
― Czesław Miłosz

“No duties. I don’t have to be profound.
I don’t have to be artistically perfect.
Or sublime. Or edifying.
I just wander. I say: ‘You were running,
That’s fine. It was the thing to do.’
And now the music of the worlds transforms me.
My planet enters a different house.
Trees and lawns become more distinct.
Philosophies one after another go out.
Everything is lighter yet not less odd.
Sauces, wine vintages, dishes of meat.
We talk a little of district fairs,
Of travels in a covered wagon with a cloud of dust behind,
Of how rivers once were, what the scent of calamus is.
That’s better than examining one’s private dreams.
And meanwhile it has arrived. It’s here, invisible.
Who can guess how it got here, everywhere.
Let others take care of it. Time for me to play hooky.
Buena notte. Ciao. Farewell.”
― Czesław Miłosz

“Consolation

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

“The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.”
― Czesław Miłosz, The Issa Valley: A Novel

“What has no shadow has no strength to live.”
― Czesław Miłosz

“Language is the only homeland."

(Poetry Reading at the M.L.A. Convention, 1998.)”
― Czesław Miłosz

“I was not meant to live anywhere except in Paradise.
Such, simply, was my genetic inadaptation.
Here on earth every prick of a rose-thorn changed into a wound. When the sun hid behind a cloud, I grieved.
I pretended to work like others from morning to evening, but I was absent, dedicated to invisible countries.”
― Czesław Miłosz

“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.
--from 'And Yet the Books”
― Czesław Miłosz

“Forget the suffering
You caused others.
Forget the suffering
Others caused you.
The waters run and run,
Springs sparkle and are done,
You walk the earth you are forgetting.

Sometimes you hear a distant refrain.
What does it mean, you ask, who is singing?
A childlike sun grows warm.
A grandson and a great-grandson are born.
You are led by the hand once again.

The names of the rivers remain with you.
How endless those rivers seem!
Your fields lie fallow,
The city towers are not as they were.
You stand at the threshold mute.”
― Czesław Miłosz

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

“فائدةُ الشعر أنْ يُذكّرنا
كيف من الصعب عليك أن تكون ذاتك”
― Czesław Miłosz

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

“You who think of us: they lived only in delusion... Know that we the People of the Book, will never die!”
― Czesław Miłosz

“It is impossible to communicate to people who have not experienced it the undefinable menace of total rationalism.”
― Czesław Miłosz

“He returns years later, has no demands.
He wants only one, most precious thing:
To see, purely and simply, without name,
Without expectations, fears, or hopes,
At the edge where there is no I or not-I.”
― Czesław Miłosz

“All of us yearn for the highest wisdom, but we have to rely on ourselves in the end.”
― Czesław Miłosz

“In Rome on the Campo dei Fiori
Baskets of olives and lemons,
Cobbles spattered with wine
And the wreckage of flowers.
Vendors cover the trestles
With rose-pink fish;
Armfuls of dark grapes
Heaped on peach-down.

On this same square
They burned Giordano Bruno.
Henchmen kindled the pyre
Close-pressed by the mob.
Before the flames had died
The taverns were full again,
Baskets of olives and lemons
Again on the vendors' shoulders.

I thought of the Campo dei Fiori
In Warsaw by the sky-carousel
One clear spring evening
To the strains of a carnival tune.
The bright melody drowned
The salvos from the ghetto wall,
And couples were flying
High in the cloudless sky.

At times wind from the burning
Would drift dark kites along
And riders on the carousel
Caught petals in midair.
That same hot wind
Blew open the skirts of the girls
And the crowds were laughing
On that beautiful Warsaw Sunday.

Someone will read as moral
That the people of Rome or Warsaw
Haggle, laugh, make love
As they pass by martyrs' pyres.
Someone else will read
Of the passing of things human,
Of the oblivion
Born before the flames have died.

But that day I thought only
Of the loneliness of the dying,
Of how, when Giordano
Climbed to his burning
There were no words
In any human tongue
To be left for mankind,
Mankind who live on.

Already they were back at their wine
Or peddled their white starfish,
Baskets of olives and lemons
They had shouldered to the fair,
And he already distanced
As if centuries had passed
While they paused just a moment
For his flying in the fire.

Those dying here, the lonely
Forgotten by the world,
Our tongue becomes for them
The language of an ancient planet.
Until, when all is legend
And many years have passed,
On a great Campo dei Fiori
Rage will kindle at a poet's word.”
― Czesław Miłosz

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

“The true enemy of man is generalization.”
― Czesław Miłosz, TESTIMONY TO THE INVISIBLE: ESSAYS ON SWEDENBORG

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

“The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person...”
― Czesław Miłosz

“أنا شاعر يكتب من وقت لآخر أشعاراً حول مواضيع تُنعت بأنها كبيرة”
― Czesław Miłosz

“The worst possible sexual education: a taboo imposed by the Catholic church plus romantic literature elevating love to unreal heights plus the obscene language of my peers. After all, I was nearly born in the nineteenth century, and I have no tender feelings for it.”
― Czesław Miłosz

“1. That reason is a gift of God and that we should believe in its ability to comprehend the world.

2. That they have been wrong who undermined confidence in reason by enumerating the forces that want to usurp it: class struggle, libido, will to power.

3. That we should be aware that our being is enclosed within the circle of its perceptions, but not reduce reality to dreams and the phantoms of the mind.

4. That truth is a proof of freedom and that the sign of slavery is the lie.

5. That the proper attitude toward being is respect and that we must, therefore, avoid the company of people who debase being with their sarcasm, and praise nothingness.

6. That, even if we are accused of arrogance, it is the case that in the life of the mind a strict hierarchy is necessary.

7. That intellectuals in the twentieth century were afflicted with the habit of baratin, i.e., irresponsible jabber.

8. That in the hierarchy of human activities the arts stand higher than philosophy, and yet bad philosophy can spoil art.

9. That the objective truth exists; namely, out of two contrary assertions, one is true, one false, except in strictly defined cases when maintaining contradiction is legitimate.

10. That quite independently of the fate of religious denominations we should preserve a "philosophical faith," i.e., a belief in transcendence as a measure of humanity.

11. That time excludes and sentences to oblivion only those works of our hands and minds which prove worthless in raising up, century after century, the huge edifice of civilization.

12. That in our lives we should not succumb to despair because of our errors and our sins, for the past is never closed down and receives the meaning we give it by our subsequent acts.”
― Czesław Miłosz, New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001

“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.

I was not separated from people,
grief and pity joined us.
We forget—I kept saying—that we are all children of the King.

For where we come from there is no division
into Yes and No, into is, was, and will be.

We were miserable, we used no more than a hundredth part
of the gift we received for our long journey.

Moments from yesterday and from centuries ago—
a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes before a mirror
of polished metal, a lethal musket shot, a caravel
staving its hull against a reef—they dwell in us,
waiting for a fulfillment.

I knew, always, that I would be a worker in the vineyard,
as are all men and women living at the same time,
whether they are aware of it or not.”
― Czesław Miłosz

“Human reason is beautiful and invincible.
No bars, no barbed wire, no pulping of books,
No sentence of banishment can prevail against it.
It puts what should be above things as they are.
It does not know Jew from Greek nor slave from master.”
― Czesław Miłosz, Selected Poems Selected Poems

“The survivors ran through the fields, escaping
From themselves, knowing they wouldn't return
For a hundred years. Before them were spread
Those quicksands where a tree changes into nothing,
Into an anti-tree, where no borderline
Separates a shape from a shape, and where,
Amid thunder, the golden house of is
Collapses, and the word becoming ascends.”
― Czesław Miłosz

“كانت لغةُ أدب القرن العشرين لغة عدم الإيمان وأنا أستخدمها كان فقط باستطاعتي أن أعرض قليلاً من حرارة إيماني”
― Czesław Miłosz

“بعدَ أن أموتَ سأرى بطانةَ العالم
الجهة الثانية ما وراء الطائر والجبل ومغيب الشمس
المعنى الحقيقي الداعي لتشفيره”
― Czesław Miłosz

“And when people cease to believe that there is good and evil,
Only beauty will call to them and save them
So that they will know how to say: this is true and that is false.”
― Czesław Miłosz, Collected Poems

“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, The Noble Traveller: The Life and Writings of O. V. de L. Milosz

“I still think too much about the mothers And ask what is man born of woman. He curls himself up and protects his head While he is kicked by heavy boots; on fire and running, He burns with bright flame; a bulldozer sweeps him into a clay pit. Her child. Embracing a teddy bear. Conceived in ecstasy.”
― Czesław Miłosz

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

“What is poetry which does not save nations or people?”
― Czesław Miłosz

“يا حبّي. أين هم. إلى أين تمضي
لمعةُ اليد. خطُ الركض. هسهسةُ الحصى.
أنا لا أسألُ من الحزن لكنما من الحيرة.”
― Czesław Miłosz

“She got out at Raspail. I was left behind with the immensity of existing things. A sponge, suffering because it cannot saturate itself; a river, suffering because reflections of clouds and trees are not clouds and trees. (Esse)”
― Czesław Miłosz, New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001

“Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.”
― Czesław Miłosz

“W mojej ojczyźnie, do której nie wrócę,
Jest takie leśne jezioro ogromne,
Chmury szerokie, rozdarte, cudowne
Pamiętam, kiedy wzrok za siebie rzucę.

I płytkich wód szept w jakimś mroku ciemnym,
I dno, na którym są trawy cierniste,
Mew czarnych krzyk, zachodów zimnych czerwień,
Cyranek świsty w górze porywiste.

Śpi w niebie moim to jezioro cierni.
Pochylam się i widzę tam na dnie
Blask mego życia. I to, co straszy mnie,
Jest tam, nim śmierć mój kształt na wieki spełni.”
― Czesław Miłosz

“Nigdy nie wie się, co poradzić z tym krzykiem, co odzywa się w nas samych.”
― Czesław Miłosz, The Issa Valley: A Novel

“When, after a long life, it falls out
That he takes on a form he had sought
And every word carved in stone
Grows its hoarfrost, what then? Torches
Of Dionysian choruses in the dark mountains
From when he comes. And half of the sky
With its snaky clouds. A mirror before him.
In the mirror the already severed, perishing
Thing.
”
― Czesław Miłosz

“All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence.”
― Czesław Miłosz

“—Most distinguished voyager, what was your eon like?

—Comic. Terror is forgotten.
Only the ridiculous is remembered by posterity.
Death from a wound, from a noose, from starvation
Is one death, but folly is uncounted and new every year.”
― Czesław Miłosz, New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001

“Of all things broken and lost, porcelain troubles me most.”
― Czesław Miłosz