Wisława Szymborska Quotes

92 Sourced Quotes

Few of them made it to thirty.
Old age was the privilege of rocks and trees.
Childhood ended as fast as wolf cubs grow.
One had to hurry, to get on with life
before the sun went down,
before the first snow.

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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
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
It's just not easy to explain to someone else what you don't understand yourself.

Wisława Szymborska
It's shocking, the positions,
the unchecked simplicity with which
one mind contrives to fertilize another!
Such positions the Kama Sutra itself doesn't know.

Wisława Szymborska
When the piranha strikes, it feels no shame.
If snakes had hands, they'd claim their hands were clean.
A jackal doesn't understand remorse.
Lions and lice don't waver in their course.
Why should they, when they know they're right?

Wisława Szymborska
Time has passed like a courier with urgent news. But that's just our simile. The character's invented, his haste is make-believe, his news inhuman.

Wisława Szymborska
No day copies yesterday, no two nights will teach what bliss is in precisely the same way, with precisely the same kisses.

Wisława Szymborska
After every war
someone has to tidy up.
Things won't pick themselves up, after all. Someone has to shove
the rubble to the roadsides
so the carts loaded with corpses
can get by.

Wisława Szymborska
The joy of writing. The power of preserving. Revenge of a mortal hand.

Wisława Szymborska
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
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
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
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.

Wisława Szymborska
They say the first love's most important. That's very romantic, but not my experience.

Wisława Szymborska
Animals don't even try to look any different from what nature intended. They humbly wear their shells, scales, spines, plumes, pelts, and down.... The conscious impulse to change one's appearance is found only among humans.

Wisława Szymborska
Something doesn't start
at its usual time.
Something doesn't happen
as it should.
Someone was always, always here,
then suddenly disappeared
and stubbornly stays disappeared.

Wisława Szymborska