Wisława Szymborska Quotes

92 Sourced Quotes

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.

Wisława Szymborska
Any knowledge that doesn't lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.

Wisława Szymborska
Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.

Wisława Szymborska
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
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
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
For the sake of research,
the big picture
and definitive conclusions,
one would have to transcend time,
in which everything scurries and whirls.

Wisława Szymborska
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
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
Secret codes resound.
Doubts and intentions come to light.

Wisława Szymborska
Carry on, then, if only for the moment that it takes a tiny galaxy to blink!

Wisława Szymborska
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
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
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
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
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
God was finally going to believe
in a man both good and strong,
but good and strong
are still two different men.

Wisława Szymborska
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
My dreams — even they're not as populous as they should be.
They hold more solitude than noisy crowds.

Wisława Szymborska
Those who knew
what this was all about
must make way for those
who know little.
And less than that.
And at last nothing less than nothing.

Wisława Szymborska
I'd have to be really quick
to describe clouds —
a split second's enough
for them to start being something else. Their trademark:
they don't repeat a single
shape, shade, pose, arrangement.

Wisława Szymborska
You were saved because you were the first.
You were saved because you were the last.
Alone. With others.
On the right. On the left.
Because it was raining. Because of the shade.
Because the day was sunny.

Wisława Szymborska
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
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
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