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Home
Authors
Wislawa Szymborska
Polish
Poet
About the author
In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.
Wislawa Szymborska,
Polish
Poet
#Tragedy
#Comedy
Somewhere out there the world must have an end.
Wislawa Szymborska,
Polish
Poet
#World
#End
You can find the entire cosmos lurking in its least remarkable objects.
Wislawa Szymborska,
Polish
Poet
#Remarkable
#Cosmos
Though I may deny poets their monopoly on inspiration, I still place them in a select group of Fortune's darlings.
Wislawa Szymborska,
Polish
Poet
#May
#Poets
#Fortune
#Inspiration
This terrifying world is not devoid of charms, of the mornings that make waking up worthwhile.
Wislawa Szymborska,
Polish
Poet
#World
#Waking
Take it not amiss, O speech, that I borrow weighty words, and later try hard to make them seem light.
Wislawa Szymborska,
Polish
Poet
#Words
#Light
#Speech
All is mine but nothing owned, nothing owned for memory, and mine only while I look.
Wislawa Szymborska,
Polish
Poet
#Nothing
#Memory
After every war someone has to tidy up.
Wislawa Szymborska,
Polish
Poet
#War
It's just not easy to explain to someone else what you don't understand yourself.
Wislawa Szymborska,
Polish
Poet
All imperfection is easier to tolerate if served up in small doses.
Wislawa Szymborska,
Polish
Poet
#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,
Polish
Poet
#Poets
All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination.
Wislawa Szymborska,
Polish
Poet
#Imagination
#Reality
#Agreement
Any knowledge that doesn't lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.
Wislawa Szymborska,
Polish
Poet
#Life
#Questions
#Knowledge
Even the worst book can give us something to think about.
Wislawa Szymborska,
Polish
Poet
Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.
Wislawa Szymborska,
Polish
Poet
#Open
#Beginning
#Events
Get to know other worlds, if only for comparison. I am near, too near for him to dream of me.
Wislawa Szymborska,
Polish
Poet
#Dream
I cannot speak for more than an hour exclusively about poetry. At that point, life itself takes over again.
Wislawa Szymborska,
Polish
Poet
#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,
Polish
Poet
#Life
#People
#Wisdom
#Sympathy
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,
Polish
Poet
#Angels
#Waiting
I started earning a living as a poet rather early on.
Wislawa Szymborska,
Polish
Poet
#Living
I'm drowning in papers.
Wislawa Szymborska,
Polish
Poet
Poetic talent doesn't operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry.
Wislawa Szymborska,
Polish
Poet
#Spirit
#Talent
#Poetry
Is a decision made in advance really any kind of choice.
Wislawa Szymborska,
Polish
Poet
#Choice
#Decision
Keep up the good work, if only for a while, if only for the twinkling of a tiny galaxy.
Wislawa Szymborska,
Polish
Poet
#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,
Polish
Poet
#Love
#People
#Will
#Saying
#Faith
Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.
Wislawa Szymborska,
Polish
Poet
#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,
Polish
Poet
#Chance
#Nothing
#Practice
#Fact
I like being near the top of a mountain. One can't get lost here.
Wislawa Szymborska,
Polish
Poet
#Being