Czeslaw Milosz Quotes

We were aware of the fact that death walks hand in hand with struggle.

Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn't all it's cracked up to be.

To have died once is enough.

Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon.

One half of my life has put the other half in the grave.

The lot of man is to suffer and die.What's gone is of no consequence.

Time will come that all that we love, we will eventually lose, and all that we hate we will eventually face.

Every day a little death.

There comes a point when you have to realize that the sum of all your blood, sweat, and tears will ultimately amount to zero.

Unwearied, and with springing steps elate, I had conveyed my wealth along the road. The empty sack proved now a heavier load: I was borne down beneath its worthless weight. I stumbled on, and knocked at Death's dark gate. There was no answer. Stung by sorrow's goad I forced my way into that grim abode, And laughed, and flung Life's empty sack to Fate.

We're all making castles in the sand, wonderful tapestries, an exquisite corpse. But is it meaningful? No. It's dogs barking. It doesn't mean anything beyond our yelping, at the pain of being alive.

No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found.

Life will end in death and unhappiness, but we do it anyway.

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

You have come into a hard world. I know of only one easy place in it, and that is the grave.

I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.

There's nothing glorious in dying. Anyone can do it.

I envy the dead.

Tragedy is one of the larger prices we pay for being alive. No one ever sidesteps tragedy. It is always there, shadowing us.

I'm dying always.

You have friends, and they die. You have a disease, someone you care about has a disease, Wall Street people are scamming everyone, the poor get poorer, the rich get richer. That's what we're surrounded by all the time.

There is some suffering that awaits us all.

I can't die but once.

Life has become the ideology of its own absence.