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Czeslaw Milosz Biography

Czesław Miłosz ([ˈt͡ʂɛswaf ˈmiwɔʂ] ( listen); 30 June 1911 – 14 August 2004) was a Polish poet, prose writer, translator and diplomat. His World War II-era sequence The World is a collection of twenty "naïve" poems. Following the war, he served as Polish cultural attaché in Paris and Washington, D.C., then in 1951 defected to the West. His nonfiction book The Captive Mind (1953) became a classic of anti-Stalinism. From 1961 to 1998 he was a professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley.

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Czeslaw Milosz Quotes

When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.

Born, Family, Finished, Writer

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet Yet is not a prophet, for he's much too busy, Repeats while he binds his tomatoes: No other end of the world will there be, No other end of the world will there be.

Busy, Man, Men, Repeats, White, Would Be

From life, from the apple cut by the flaming knife, what grain will be saved? My son, believe me, nothing remains, Only adult toil, the furrow of fate in the palm. Only toil, Nothing more.

Adult, Apple, Believe, Fate, Life, Son

A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death.

Belief, Death, Nothingness, Opium, People, Solace

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

Clutch, Hold, Illusion, Men, Nothing

Every poet depends upon generations who wrote in his native tongue; he inherits styles and forms elaborated by those who lived before him. At the same time, though, he feels that those old means of expression are not adequate to his own experience.

Depends, Expression, Mean, Style, Wrote

Consciousness even in my sleep changes primary colors. The features of my face melt like a wax doll in the fire. And who can consent to see in the mirror the mere face of man?

Doll, Fire, Men, Sleep, Wax

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.

Doe, Enigmatic, Impulse, Reality, Settle, Thinking

On the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net.

Bees, Circles, Clover, Fisherman, Glimmering, World

Human reason is beautiful and invincible. No bars, no barbed wire, no pulping of books, No sentence of banishment can prevail against it. It puts what should be above things as they are. It does not know Jew from Greek nor slave from master.

Barbed, Beautiful, Book, Greek, Invincible

If I am all mankind, are they themselves without me?

Ifs, Mankind

I am not my own friend. Time cuts me in two.

Cuts, Cutting, End Times, Friend, Time, Two

A man should not love the moon. An ax should not lose weight in his hand. His garden should smell of rotting apples And grow a fair amount of nettles.

Apples, Garden, Lose, Men, Moon

Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth.

Grain, Small, Tree, Truth, Weary Traveler

All of us yearn for the highest wisdom, but we have to rely on ourselves in the end.

Ends, Highest, Rely, Yearn

What is poetry which does not save nations or people?

Doe, Nations, People, Poetry, Sea

I imagine the earth when I am no more: Women's dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley. Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born, Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.

Book, Derived, Dewy, People, Song

In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.

Integrity, Like, Maintain, People, Room, Truth

The death of a man is like the fall of a mighty nation That had valiant armies, captains, and prophets, And wealthy ports and ships all over the seas.

Army, Captains, Fall, Man, Men, Valiant

The partition separating life from death is so tenuous. The unbelievable fragility of our organism suggests a vision on a screen: a kind of mist condenses itself into a human shape, lasts a moment and scatters.

Condenses, Fragility, Philosophical, Separating, Tenuous, Vision

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