Czesław Miłosz Quotes

The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person...

The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history.

Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth. Do not follow those who lie in contempt of ...

Sceptical Ketman is widely disseminated throughout intellectual circles. One argues that humanity do...

Poetry is an attempt to penetrate the dense reality to find a place where the simplest things look a...

Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.

If there is no God,Not everything is permitted to man.He is still his brother's keeperAnd he is not ...

LearningTo believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enou...

I have defined poetry as a 'passionate pursuit of the Real.

Professional Ketman is reasoned thus: since I find myself in circumstances over which I have no cont...

The purpose of poetry is to remind ushow difficult it is to remain just one person,for our house is ...

Religion used to be the opium of the people. To those suffering humiliation, pain, illness, and serf...

In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent; A thing brought forth that we didn't know...

Horror is the law of the world of living creatures, and civilization is concerned with masking that ...

A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death - the huge solace of thinking that...

No duties. I don’t have to be profound.I don’t have to be artistically perfect.Or sublime. Or edifyi...

Language is the only homeland.

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

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

It is sweet to think I was a companion in an expedition that never ends

The world deprived of clear-cut outlines, of the up and the down, of good and evil, succumbs to a pe...

I was left behind with the immensity of existing things. A river, suffering because reflections of c...

If the world is divided between Fascism and Communism, obviously Fascism must lose since it is the l...

Reality calls for a name, for words, but it is unbearable, and if it is touched, if it draws very cl...

Since poetry deals with the singular, not the general, it cannot - if it is good poetry - look at th...

The work of human thought should withstand the test of brutal, naked reality. If it cannot, it is wo...

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

Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year, I felt a door opening in me and I entered th...

The bright side of the planet moves toward darknessAnd the cities are falling asleep, each in its ho...