Zbigniew Herbert Quotes & Sayings

Very early on, near the beginning of my writing life, I came to believe that I had to seize on some object outside of literature. Writing as a sylistic exercise seemed barren to me. Poetry as the art of the word made me yawn. I also understood that I couldn't sustain myself very long on the poems of others. I had to go out from myself and literature, look around in the world and lay hold of other spheres of reality. — Zbigniew Herbert

go upright among those who are down on their knees
those with their backs turned those toppled in the dust

you have survived not so that you might live
you have little time you must give testimony

be courageous when reason fails you be courageous
in the final reckoning it is the only thing that counts

and your helpless Anger - may it be like the sea
whenever you hear the voice of the insulted and beaten — Zbigniew Herbert

I turn to history not for lessons but to confront my experience with the experience of others and to win for myself a sense of responsibility for the state of the human conscience. — Zbigniew Herbert

The carpet is too soft. Also the palm tree in the lobby is unbelievable. For a long time the Maitre looks at our faces, shuffling passports in his hands. "Such dark-ringed eyes, such dark-ringed eyes. I knew a merchant from Smyrna, who also had a false front tooth. Nowadays one has to be terribly careful: informers and scorpions are everywhere."

In the elevator we stand facing the mirror, but already at the first jerk we see silvery mildew in the place of our faces. — Zbigniew Herbert

Be courageous when the mind deceives you Be courageous In the final account only this is important — Zbigniew Herbert

We fall asleep on words / we wake among words — Zbigniew Herbert

Study the world's skin before you set out to look for its heart. — Zbigniew Herbert

Even if we love someone very much, at times it happens that we forget about it. — Zbigniew Herbert

I could write a treatise on the sudden transformation of life into archaeology — Zbigniew Herbert

A craftsman must probe to the very bottom of cruelty. — Zbigniew Herbert

cemeteries grow larger the number of defenders shrinks
but the defense continues and will last to the end
and even if the City falls and one of us survives
he will carry the City inside him on the roads of exile
he will be the City

we look at the face of hunger the face of fire the face of death
and the worst of them all - the face of treason

and only our dreams have not been humiliated — Zbigniew Herbert

No time to grieve for roses when the forests are burning. — Zbigniew Herbert

there's a terrible silence
before a predator's night

sometimes
an absurd airplane
appears in the sky

it throws out leaflets
calling for surrender

I would be happy to surrender
but I've no one to surrender to — Zbigniew Herbert

I thank You Lord for creating the world beautiful and various and if this is Your seduction I am seduced for good and past all forgiveness — Zbigniew Herbert

when the Lord built the world
he furrowed his brow
calculated calculated calculated
that is why the world is perfect
and uninhabitable

instead the world of the painter
is good
and full of mistakes
the eye wanders
from one color to another
one fruit to another
the eye mumbles
the eye smiles
remembers

the eye says it is bearable
only if one could
enter inside
there where the painter was
without wings
in slippers that fall off
without Virgil
with a cat in the pocket
a benevolent fantasy
and a hand
that unknowingly
corrects the world — Zbigniew Herbert

So is blurred
so is blurred
in me
what white-haired gentleman
separated once and for all
and said
this is the subject
this is the object

we fall asleep
with one hand under our head
and with the other in a mound of planets

our feet abandon us
and taste the earth
with their tiny roots
which next morning
we tear out painfully — Zbigniew Herbert

Forgive me also that I didn't fight like Lord Byron for the happiness of captive peoples that I watched only risings of the moon and museums — Zbigniew Herbert

The dead have need of fairy tales too. — Zbigniew Herbert

Inanimate objects are always correct and cannot, unfortunately, be reproached with anything. I have never observed a chair shift from one foot to another, or a bed rear on its hind legs. And tables, even when they are tired, will not dare to bend their knees. I suspect that objects do this from pedagogical considerations, to reprove us constantly for our instability. — Zbigniew Herbert

And if the City falls and one survives
he shall carry the City within on the roads of exile
he shall be the City — Zbigniew Herbert

Lord
I thank you for creating the world beautiful and various

and for allowing me in Your fathomless goodness to visit places which were not the sites of my daily torments — Zbigniew Herbert

I do not turn to history to draw from it an easy lesson of hope, but to confront my experience with that of others, to acquire something I might call universal compassion, and also a sense of responsibility, responsibility for the state of my conscience. — Zbigniew Herbert