Wislawa Szymborska Quotes
-
At the very beginning of my creative life I loved humanity. I wanted to do something good for mankind. Soon I understood that it isn't possible to save mankind.
-
A Note Life is the only way to get covered in leaves, catch your breath on the sand, rise on wings; to be a dog, or stroke its warm fur; to tell pain from everything it's not; to squeeze inside events, dawdle in views, to seek the least of all possible mistakes. An extraordinary chance to remember for a moment a conversation held with the lamp switched off; and if only once to stumble upon a stone, end up soaked in one downpour or another, mislay your keys in the grass; and to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes; and to keep on not knowing something important.
-
I'm old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.
-
What does the world get from two people/who exist in a world of their own?
-
It's just not easy to explain to someone else what you don't understand yourself.
-
They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one's behind me, anyway.
-
Keep up the good work, if only for a while, if only for the twinkling of a tiny galaxy.
-
I cannot speak for more than an hour exclusively about poetry. At that point, life itself takes over again.
-
No one feels good at four in the morning. If ants feel good at four in the morning —three cheers for the ants.
-
There's simply too much fuss about myself.
-
History counts its skeletons in round numbers. A thousand and one remains a thousand, as though the one had never existed: an imaginary embryo, an empty cradle, ... emptiness running down steps toward the garden, nobody's place in line.
-
After every war someone has to tidy up.
-
Carry on, then, if only for the moment that it takes a tiny galaxy to blink!
-
I'm working on the world, revised, improved edition, featuring fun for fools blues for brooders, combs for bald pates, tricks for old dogs.
-
Memory at last has what I sought.
-
Somewhere out there the world must have an end.
-
But they know about us, they know, the four corners, and the chairs nearby us. Discerning shadows also know, and even the table keeps quiet.
-
In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.
-
All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination.
-
Generally speaking, life is so rich and full of variety; you have to remember all the time that there is a comical side to everything.
-
Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.
-
I don't know the role I'm playing. I only know it's mine, non-convertible.
-
I'm one-time-only to the marrow of my bones.
-
Sometimes I write quickly, sometimes I spend several weeks on a single poem. I would really love for readers not to be able to guess which of the poems took so much work!