Czesław Miłosz

Not that I want to be a god or a hero. Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone.

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

Learning: To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life.

Language is the only homeland.

Yet falling in love is not the same as being able to love.

The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.

A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death - the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders we are not going to be judged.