Wisława Szymborska - Human Quotes

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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
Loveless work, boring work, work valued only because others haven't got even that much, however loveless and boring—this is one of the harshest human miseries.

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
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
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
He's no end of fun, for all you say.
Poor little beggar.
A human, if ever we saw one.

Wisława Szymborska