Czeslaw Milosz Quotes

Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.

Time hurries by, we're here and gone.

In the attempt to defeat death man has been inevitably obliged to defeat life, for the two are inextricably related. Life moves on to death, and to deny one is to deny the other.

We are dying, we are dying, piecemeal our bodies are dying and our strength leaves us, and our soul cowers naked in the dark rain over the flood, cowering in the last branches of the tree of our life.

Even in our best shape we are a brittle piece of mortality. Your life is a breath, don't waste it.

Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow.

The life of man in this world is like the life of a fly in a room filled with 100 boys, each armed with a fly-swatter.

Your body is like a dew-drop on the morning grass, your life is as brief as a flash of lightning. Momentary and vain, it is lost in a moment.

The seeds of Death are sown in us when we begin to live, and grow up till, like rampant weeds, they choak the tender flower of life.

Oh, we are but soft and squishy bags of mortality rolling in a bin of sharp circumstance, leaking life until we collapse, flaccid, into our own despair.

For all men have but a little while to live and none knows his fate thereafter. So that a man possesses nothing certainly save a brief loan of his body: and yet the body of man is capable of much curious pleasure.

We like to think of life as a constant ... Yet it can be ended in a heartbeat.

Yes, man is mortal, but that would be only half the trouble. The worst of it is that he's sometimes unexpectedly mortal—there's the trick!

You never know what life means till you die; even throughout life, tis death that makes life live.

I saw my own blood and I thought, how could I live in a world where this exists- where love can become death?

The greatest surprise in life to me is the brevity of life.

Alack our life, so beautiful to see, With how much ease life losest, in a day, What many years with pain and toil amassed!

Death is our constant companion, and it is death that gives each person's life its true meaning.

As leaves on the trees, such is the life of man.

Time has not stood still. It has washed over me, washed me away, as if I'm nothing more than a woman of sand, left by a careless child too near the water.

Surely mortal man is a broomstick!

That's the trouble with living things. Don't last very long. Kittens one day, old cats the next. And then just memories. And the memories fade and blend and smudge together.

Everybody going to be dead one day, just give them time.