Wislawa Szymborska Quotes
"Somewhere out there the world must have an end."
- Wislawa Szymborska
(Related: End, World)
"You can find the entire cosmos lurking in its least remarkable objects."
- Wislawa Szymborska
(Related: Cosmos, Remarkable)
"Though I may deny poets their monopoly on inspiration, I still place them in a select group of Fortune's darlings."
- Wislawa Szymborska
(Related: Inspiration, Fortune, May, Poets)
"This terrifying world is not devoid of charms, of the mornings that make waking up worthwhile."
- Wislawa Szymborska
(Related: Waking, World)
"Take it not amiss, O speech, that I borrow weighty words, and later try hard to make them seem light."
- Wislawa Szymborska
(Related: Light, Speech, Words)
"All is mine but nothing owned, nothing owned for memory, and mine only while I look."
- Wislawa Szymborska
(Related: Memory, Nothing)
"After every war someone has to tidy up."
- Wislawa Szymborska
(Related: War)
"It's just not easy to explain to someone else what you don't understand yourself."
- Wislawa Szymborska
"All imperfection is easier to tolerate if served up in small doses."
- Wislawa Szymborska
(Related: Imperfection)
"Poets yearn, of course, to be published, read, and understood, but they do little, if anything, to set themselves above the common herd and the daily grind."
- Wislawa Szymborska
(Related: Poets)
"All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination."
- Wislawa Szymborska
(Related: Imagination, Agreement, Reality)
"Any knowledge that doesn't lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life."
- Wislawa Szymborska
(Related: Life, Knowledge, Questions)
"Even the worst book can give us something to think about."
- Wislawa Szymborska
"Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through."
- Wislawa Szymborska
(Related: Beginning, Events, Open)
"Get to know other worlds, if only for comparison. I am near, too near for him to dream of me."
- Wislawa Szymborska
(Related: Dream)
"I cannot speak for more than an hour exclusively about poetry. At that point, life itself takes over again."
- Wislawa Szymborska
(Related: Life, Poetry)
"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 life's wisdom."
- Wislawa Szymborska
(Related: Wisdom, Sympathy, People, Life)
"I slide my arm from under the sleeper's head and it is numb, full of swarming pins, on the tip of each, waiting to be counted, the fallen angels sit."
- Wislawa Szymborska
(Related: Angels, Waiting)
"I started earning a living as a poet rather early on."
- Wislawa Szymborska
(Related: Living)
"I'm drowning in papers."
- Wislawa Szymborska
"Poetic talent doesn't operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry."
- Wislawa Szymborska
(Related: Poetry, Talent, Spirit)
"Is a decision made in advance really any kind of choice."
- Wislawa Szymborska
(Related: Decision, Choice)
"Keep up the good work, if only for a while, if only for the twinkling of a tiny galaxy."
- Wislawa Szymborska
(Related: Work)
"Let the people who never find true love keep saying that there's no such thing. Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die."
- Wislawa Szymborska
(Related: Faith, Love, People, Saying, Will)
"Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand."
- Wislawa Szymborska
(Related: Life)
"Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice."
- Wislawa Szymborska
(Related: Chance, Fact, Nothing, Practice)
"I like being near the top of a mountain. One can't get lost here."
- Wislawa Szymborska
(Related: Being)