Selected and Last Poems 1931-2004
A source page for quotes linked to Czeslaw Milosz.
“Destruction and suffering are the school of social thought.”
“All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence.”
“Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.”
“I am not my own friend.Time cuts me in two.”
“Poetry is news brought to the mountains by a unicorn and an echo.”
“On the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net.”
“When I curse Fate, it's not me, but the earth in me.”
“A weak human mercy walks in the corridors of hospitals and is like a half-thawed winter.”
“When I die, I will see the lining of the world. The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset.”
“The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history.”
“Yet falling in love is not the same as being able to love.”
“The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.”