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Wisława Szymborska

70 quotes

“Those who knew what was going on here must make way for those who know little. And less than little. And finally as little as nothing.In the grass that has overgrown causes and effects, someone must be stretched out blade of grass in his mouth gazing at the clouds.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The End and the Beginning", quoted as epigraph in Margaret MacMillan, War: How Conflict Changed Us (2020), conclusion
“They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one's behind me, anyway.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Contemporary poets are skeptical and suspicious even, or perhaps especially, about themselves. They publicly confess to being poets only reluctantly, as if they were a little ashamed of it. But in our clamorous times it's much easier to acknowledge your faults, at least if they're attractively packaged, than to recognize your own merits, since these are hidden deeper and you never quite believe in them yourself.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Any knowledge that doesn't lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There's nothing new under the sun": that's what you wrote, Ecclesiastes. But you yourself were born new under the sun. And the poem you created is also new under the sun, since no one wrote it down before you. And all your readers are also new under the sun, since those who lived before you couldn't read your poem. And that cypress under which you're sitting hasn't been growing since the dawn of time. It came into being by way of another cypress similar to yours, but not exactly the same.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Granted, in daily speech, where we don't stop to consider every word, we all use phrases like "the ordinary world," "ordinary life," "the ordinary course of events"… But in the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence, not anyone's existence in this world. It looks like poets will always have their work cut out for them.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Here we are, naked lovers, beautiful to each other—and that's enough. The leaves of our eyelids our only covers, we're lying amidst deep night.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Toy balloon once kidnapped by the wind — come home, and I will say: There are no children here.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They were or they weren't. On an island or not. An ocean or not an ocean Swallowed them up or it didn't.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm working on the world, revised, improved edition, featuring fun for fools blues for brooders, combs for bald pates, tricks for old dogs.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our snakes have shed their lightning, our apes their flights of fancy, our peacocks have renounced their plumes. The bats flew out of our hair long ago. We fall silent in mid-sentence, all smiles, past help. Our humans don't know how to talk to one another.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am too close for him to dream of me. I don't flutter over him, don't flee him beneath the roots of trees. I am too close. The caught fish doesn't sing with my voice. The ring doesn't roll from my finger. I am too close.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My cry could only waken him. And what a poor gift: I, confined to my own form, when I used to be a birch, a lizard shedding times and satin skins in many shimmering hues.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In Heraclitus' river a fish has imagined the fish of all fish, a fish kneels to the fish, a fish sings to the fish, a fish begs the fish to ease its fishy lot.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I, the solitary fish, a fish apart (apart at least from the tree fish and the stone fish), write, at isolated moments, a tiny fish or two whose glittering scales, so fleeting, may only be the dark's embarrassed wink.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No other sense can make up for your missing sense of taking part. Even sight heightened to become all-seeing will do you no good without a sense of taking part. You shall not enter, you have only a sense of what the sense should be, only its seed, imagination.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I knock at the stone's front door. "It's only me, let me come in.""I don't have a door," says the stone.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Born. So he was born, too. Born like everyone else. Like me, who will die. The son of an actual woman. A new arrival from the body's depths. A voyager to Omega.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our stockpile of antiquity grows constantly, it's overflowing, reckless squatters jostle for a place in history, hordes of sword fodder, Hector's nameless extras, no less brave than he, thousands upon thousands of singular faces, each the first and last for all time, in each a pair of inimitable eyes. How easy it was to live not knowing this, so sentimental, so spacious.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I remember it so clearly — how people, seeing me, would break off in midword. Laughter died. Lovers' hands unclasped. Children ran to their mothers. I didn't even know their short-lived names. And that song about a little green leaf — no one ever finished it near me.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm sorry that my voice was hard. Look down on yourselves from the stars, I cried, look down on yourselves from the stars. They heard me and lowered their eyes.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Yes, she loved him very much. Yes, he was born that way. Yes, she was standing by the prison wall that morning. Yes, she heard the shots. You may regret not having brought a camera, a tape recorder. Yes, she has seen such things.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Yes, the memory still moves her. Yes, just a little tired now. Yes, it will pass. You may get up. Thank her. Say good-bye. Leave, passing by the new arrivals in the hall.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whose side are you on?" "I don't know." "This is a war, you've got to choose." "I don't know." "Does your village still exist?" "I don't know." "Are those your children?" "Yes.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This adult male. This person on earth. Ten billion nerve cells. Ten pints of blood pumped by ten ounces of heart. This object took three billion years to emerge.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He feels like a handle broken off a jug, but the jug doesn't know it's broken and keeps going to the well.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Within him, there's awful darkness, in the darkness a small boy. God of humor, do something about him, OK? God of humor, do something about him today.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am a tarsier and a tarsier's son, the grandson and great-grandson of tarsiers, a tiny creature, made up of two pupils and whatever simply could not be left out...”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And only we few who remain unstripped of fur, untorn from bone, unplucked of soaring feathers, esteemed in all our quills, scales, tusks, and horns, and in whatever else that ingenious protein has seen fit to clothe us with, we, my lord, are your dream, which finds you innocent for now.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So he's got to have happiness, he's got to have truth, too, he's got to have eternity — did you ever!”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He has only just learned to tell dreams from waking; only just realized that he is he; only just whittled with his hand né fin a flint, a rocket ship; easily drowned in the ocean's teaspoon, not even funny enough to tickle the void: sees only with his eyes; hears only with his ears; his speech's personal best is the conditional; he uses his reason to pick holes in reason. In short, he's next to to one, but his head's full of freedom, omniscience and the Being beyond his foolish meat — did you ever!”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He's no end of fun, for all you say. Poor little beggar. A human, if ever we saw one.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everything the dead predicted has turned out completely different. Or a little bit different — which is to say, completely different.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I believe in the refusal to take part. I believe in the ruined career. I believe in the wasted years of work. I believe in the secret taken to the grave.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I lost a few goddesses while moving south to north and also some gods while moving east to west.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My siblings died the day I left for dry land and only one small bone recalls that anniversary in me.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Gone, lost, scattered to the four winds. It still surprises me how little now remains, one first person sing., temporarily declined in human form, just now making such a fuss about a blue umbrella left yesterday on a bus.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My apologies to the felled tree for the table's four legs. My apologies to great questions for small answers.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I know I won't be justified as long as I live, since I myself stand in my own way. Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words, then labor heavily so that they may seem light.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My choices are rejections, since there is no other way, but what I reject is more numerous, denser, more demanding than before. A little poem, a sigh, at the cost of indescribable losses.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My dreams — even they're not as populous as they should be. They hold more solitude than noisy crowds.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And how can we talk of order overall when the very placement of the stars leaves us doubting just what shines for whom?Not to speak of the fog's reprehensible drifting! And dust blowing all over the steppes as if they hadn't been partitioned! And the voices coasting on obliging airwaves, that conspiratorial squeaking, those indecipherable mutters! Only what is human can truly be foreign.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I felt age within me. Distance. The futility of wandering. Torpor. I looked back setting my bundle down. I looked back not knowing where to set my foot. Serpents appeared on my path, spiders, field mice, baby vultures. They were neither good nor evil now — every living thing was simply creeping or hopping along in the mass panic.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The going's rough, and so we need the laugh of bright incisors, molars of goodwill. Our times are still not safe and sane enough for faces to show ordinary sorrow.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“On this third planet from the sun among the signs of bestiality a clear conscience is Number One.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Millennia have passed since you first called me archaeology. I no longer require your stone gods, your ruins with legible inscriptions. Show me your whatever and I'll tell you who you were.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Secret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Show me your little poem and I'll tell you why it wasn't written any earlier or later than it was.Oh no, you've got me wrong. Keep your funny piece of paper with its scribbles. All I need for my ends is your layer of dirt and the long gone smell of burning.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We call it a grain of sand but it calls itself neither grain nor sand. It does just fine without a name, whether general, particular, permanent, passing, incorrect or apt.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The window has a wonderful view of a lake, but the view doesn't view itself. It exists in this world colorless, shapeless, soundless, odorless, and painless.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source