193 Quotes by Wisława Szymborska

Only what is human can truly be foreign. The rest is mixed vegetation, subversive moles, and wind.

So much world all at once--how it rustles and bustles! Moraines and morays and morasses and mussels, the flame, the flamingo, the flounder, the feather--

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity. My apologies to necessity if I'm mistaken, after all. Please, don't be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due. May my dead be patient with the way my memories fade. My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second.

See how efficient it still is, how it keeps itself in shape--our century's hatred. How easily it vaults the tallest obstacles. How rapidly it pounces, tracks us down.

One religion or another--whatever gets it ready, in position. One fatherland or another--whatever helps it get a running start. Justice also works well at the outset until hate gets its own momentum going. Hatred. Hatred.

Since when does brotherhood draw crowds? Has compassion ever finished first? Does doubt ever really rouse the rabble? Only hatred has just what it takes.

When I pronounce the word Future,the first syllable already belongs to the past.When I pronounce the word Silence,I destroy it.

But human beings are, by nature, sad. So be it, then. It isn't all that bad.

The price, after all, for not having died alreadygoes up not in leaps but step by step, and he would pay that price, too.