Wislawa Szymborska Quotes
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I like being near the top of a mountain. One can't get lost here.
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Somewhere out there the world must have an end.
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Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.
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In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.
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Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.
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I'm one-time-only to the marrow of my bones.
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All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination.
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Existentialists are monumentally and monotonously serious; they don't like to joke.
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Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice.
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I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
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All imperfection is easier to tolerate if served up in small doses.
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I have sympathy for young people, for their growing pains, but I balk when these growing pains are pushed into the foreground, when you make these young people the only vehicles of lifes wisdom.
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Poets, if they're genuine, must keep repeating "I don't know." Each poem marks an effort to answer this statement, but as soon as the final period hits the page, the poet begins to hesitate, starts to realize that this particular answer was pure makeshift that's absolutely inadequate to boot. So the poets keep on trying, and sooner or later the consecutive results of their self-dissatisfaction are clipped together with a giant paperclip by literary historians and called their oeuvre.
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Secret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light.
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No day copies yesterday, no two nights will teach what bliss is in precisely the same way, with precisely the same kisses.
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When I mention somebody, that doesn't necessarily mean that I identify with him, personally or poetically. I'm extremely happy when I encounter poets who are different than I am. The ones who have their own distinct poetics provide me with the greatest experiences.
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Animals don't even try to look any different from what nature intended. They humbly wear their shells, scales, spines, plumes, pelts, and down. ... The conscious impulse to change one's appearance is found only among humans.
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Even boredom should be described with gusto. How many things are happening on a day when nothing happens?
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It's a well-known fact: in order to follow doctor's orders, you have to be healthy as a horse.
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Loveless work, boring work, work valued only because others haven't got even that much, however loveless and boring - this is one of the harshest human miseries.
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Get to know other worlds, if only for comparison.
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No one in my family has ever died of love. What happened, happened, but nothing myth-inspiring.
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Even a graphomaniac is an extremely complicated person.
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Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still