Wislawa Szymborska Quotes

This terrifying world is not devoid of charms, of the mornings that make waking up worthwhile.

Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists. There is, there has been, there will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It's made up of all those who've consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination. Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from every problem that they solve. Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous 'I don't know.'

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

Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous "I don't know.

Whether you want it or not, your genes have a political past, your skin a political tone. your eyes a political color. ... you walk with political steps on political ground.

Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still

There is so much Everything that Nothing is hidden quite nicely

You can find the entire cosmos lurking in its least remarkable objects.

And whatever I do will become forever what I've done.

I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.

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.

I'm old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.

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

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.

All is mine but nothing owned, nothing owned for memory, and mine only while I look.

Get to know other worlds, if only for comparison.

At the very beginning of my creative life I loved humanity. I wanted to do something good for mankind. Soon I understood that it isn't possible to save mankind.

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

Nothing's a gift, it's all on loan

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

I am who I am. A coincidence no less unthinkable than any other.

In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.

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

All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination. Even the richest, most surprising and wild imagination is not as rich, wild and surprising as reality. The task of the poet is to pick singular threads from this dense, colorful fabric.

I like being near the top of a mountain. One can't get lost here.