Milosz Poetry Quotes & Sayings

In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent; A thing brought forth that we didn't know we had in us, So we blink our eyes, as if a tiger had sprung out And stood in the light, licking its tail. — Czeslaw Milosz

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. — Czeslaw Milosz

Books are challenging and inspirational to me. — Amy Sedaris

Poetry is a dividend from what you know and what you are. — Czeslaw Milosz

A man is lying under machine-gun fire on a street in an embattled city. He looks at the pavement and sees a very amusing sight: the cobblestones are standing upright like the quills of a porcupine. The bullets hitting against their edges displace and tilt them. Such moments in the consciousness of a man judge all poets and philosophers. Let us suppose, too, that a certain poet was the hero of the literary cafes, and wherever he went was regarded with curiosity and awe. Yet his poems, recalled in such a moment, suddenly seem diseased and highbrow. The vision of the cobblestones is unquestionably real, and poetry based on an equally naked experience could survive triumphantly that judgment day of man's illusions. — Czeslaw Milosz

Mother Nature, as Tennyson said, is "red in tooth and claw," demolishing every beautiful thing she has ever created. — Caitlin Doughty

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. — Czeslaw Milosz

I think it was Milosz, the Polish poet, who when he lay in a doorway and watched the bullets lifting the cobbles out of the street beside him realised that most poetry is not equipped for life in a world where people actually die. But some is. — Ted Hughes

If there is no God,
Not everything is permitted to man.
He is still his brother's keeper
And he is not permitted to sadden his brother,
By saying there is no God. — Czeslaw Milosz

There just isn't enough time for everything on our 'to do' list - and there never will be. Successful people don't try to do everything. They learn to focus on the most important tasks and make sure they get done. — Brian Tracy

Poetry to [Milosz], then, was not so much a weapon as a witness against evil. — Leonard Nathan

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. — Czeslaw Milosz

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

Would a musician feel flattered by the loud applause of an audience if he knew that they were nearly all deaf, and that, to conceal their infirmity, they set to work to clap vigorously as soon as ever they saw one or two persons applauding? — Arthur Schopenhauer

It's a chore sometimes, isn't it? Wake up. Prepare food. Eat. Every day is just something checked off the long 'to do' list until we die, — Zoe Perdita

Poetry is news brought to the mountains by a unicorn and an echo. — Czeslaw Milosz

I'll be there for Thanksgiving', Mike said before hanging up, and she heard his kiss on the phone--the kind reserved for family." Things Unsaid, from Chapter, "Thanksgiving — Diana Y. Paul

A name is only what others want you to believe." He pauses, hoping that the pause will let the meaning sink in. "I am what I am, not what others would have you believe." Martel smiles. "And a pleasant evening to you all. — L.E. Modesitt Jr.

What is not pronounced tends to nonexistence. — Czeslaw Milosz

Sometimes the world loses its face. it becomes too base. The task of the poet is to restore its face, because otherwise man is lost in doubt and despair. It is an indication that the world need not always be like this; it can be different.
When I wrote...that I accepted the salvational goal of poetry, that was exactly what I had in mind, and I still believe that poetry can either save or destroy nations. — Czeslaw Milosz

Alas, our fundamental experience is duality: mind and body, freedom and necessity, evil and good, and certainly world and God. It is the same with our protest against pain and death. In the poetry I select I am not seeking an escape from dread but rather proof that dread and reverence can exist within us simultaneously. — Czeslaw Milosz

There is nothing in cricket more calculated to raise a laugh than the sight of some determined and serious man under a spiralling catch. — Peter Roebuck

There are two kinds of women: those who marry princes and those who marry frogs. The frogs never become princes, but it is an acknowledged fact that a prince may very well, in the course of an ordinary marrige, gradually, at first almost imperceptibly, turn into a frog. Happy the woman who after twenty-five years still wakes up beside the prince she fell in love with. — Stephen Mitchell

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. — Czeslaw Milosz

What is poetry which does not save nations or people? — Czeslaw Milosz

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. — Czeslaw Milosz

I am composed of contradictions, which is why poetry is a better form for me than philosophy — Czeslaw Milosz

When, as my friend suggested, I stand before Zeus (whether I die naturally, or under sentence of History)I will repeat all this that I have written as my defense.Many people spend their entire lives collecting stamps or old coins, or growing tulips. I am sure that Zius will be merciful toward people who have given themselves entirely to these hobbies, even though they are only amusing and pointless diversions. I shall say to him : "It is not my fault that you made me a poet, and that you gave me the gift of seeing simultaneously what was happening in Omaha and Prague, in the Baltic states and on the shores of the Arctic Ocean.I felt that if I did not use that gift my poetry would be tasteless to me and fame detestable. Forgive me." And perhaps Zeus, who does not call stamp-collectors and tulip-growers silly, will forgive. — Czeslaw Milosz

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

I raised my kids kind of old-fashioned - if you don't have something nice to say, then don't say it at all. I teach love, acceptance, and tolerance ... I sometimes think that this generation is lacking in decency. — Kris Jenner

Bad as "independence" is, the main fault of the Federal Reserve System - an admirable system if conducted in the public interest - is that too much power and control rests in the hands of people whose private interests are directly affected by the Federal Reserves' actions. — Wright Patman

Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power. — Bertrand Russell

...experience has proved the distinction of active and passive courage. The fanatic who endures without a groan the torture of the rack or the state would tremble and fly before the face of an armed enemy. — Edward Gibbon