What is poetry which does not save nations or people?
classic quote by Czeslaw Milosz
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The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history.
classic quote by Czeslaw Milosz
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It is impossible to communicate to people who have not experienced it the undefinable menace of total rationalism.
classic quote by Czeslaw Milosz
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What is this enigmatic impulse that does not allow one to settle down in the achieved, the finished? I think it is a quest for reality.
Czeslaw Milosz in Nobel lecture (8 December 1980)
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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.
quote by Czeslaw Milosz
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At the entrance, my bare feet on the dirt floor, Here, gusts of heat; at my back, white clouds. I stare and stare. It seems I was called for this: To glorify things just because they are.
classic quote by Czeslaw Milosz
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Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth. Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality. Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself, so the weary travelers may find repose.
classic quote by Czeslaw Milosz
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What I'm saying here is not, I agree, poetry, as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly, under unbearable duress and only with the hope that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.
quote by Czeslaw Milosz
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Human material seems to have one major defect: it does not like to be considered merely as human material. It finds it hard to endure the feeling that it must resign itself to passive acceptance of changes introduced from above.
classic quote by Czeslaw Milosz
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In Black Despair
In grayish doubt and black despair,
I drafted hymns to the earth and the air,
pretending to joy, although I lacked it.
The age had made lament redundant.
So here's the question -- who can answer it --
Was he a brave man or a hypocrite?
poem by Czeslaw Milosz
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