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Wislawa Szymborska [1923-2012] Polish

Rank: 101
Poet

Maria Wisława Anna Szymborska was a Polish poet, essayist, translator and recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Prowent, which has since become part of Kórnik, she later resided in Kraków until the end of her life.

Poetry, Chance, Faith, Imagination, Knowledge, Respect, Sympathy, Wisdom, Work

Quote	Tags	Rank
Any knowledge that doesn't lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.	Knowledge	101
I slide my arm from under the sleeper's head and it is numb, full of swarming pins, on the tip of each, waiting to be counted, the fallen angels sit.		102
Keep up the good work, if only for a while, if only for the twinkling of a tiny galaxy.	Work	103
You can find the entire cosmos lurking in its least remarkable objects.		104
Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.		105
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.	Faith	106
You know, I'm worried about Szymborska. I wish she would stop smoking.		107
Solitude is very important in my work as a mode of inspiration, but isolation is not good in this respect. I am not writing poetry about isolation.	Poetry, Respect	108
Though I may deny poets their monopoly on inspiration, I still place them in a select group of Fortune's darlings.		109
All imperfection is easier to tolerate if served up in small doses.		110
I have sympathy for young people, for their growing pains, but I balk when these growing pains are pushed into the foreground, when you make these young people the only vehicles of life's wisdom.	Sympathy, Wisdom	111
Generally speaking, life is so rich and full of variety; you have to remember all the time that there is a comical side to everything.		112
Even the worst book can give us something to think about.		113
I cannot speak for more than an hour exclusively about poetry. At that point, life itself takes over again.	Poetry	114
I like being near the top of a mountain. One can't get lost here.		115
In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.		116
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.		117
'There's nothing new under the sun': that's what you wrote, Ecclesiastes. But you yourself were born new under the sun.		118
All is mine but nothing owned, nothing owned for memory, and mine only while I look.		119
Unfortunately, poetry is not born in noise, in crowds, or on a bus. There have to be four walls and the certainty that the telephone will not ring. That's what writing is all about.	Poetry	120
Somewhere out there the world must have an end.		121
Get to know other worlds, if only for comparison. I am near, too near for him to dream of me.		122
It's just not easy to explain to someone else what you don't understand yourself.		123
Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.		124
Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice.	Chance	125
Everyone needs solitude, especially a person who is used to thinking about what she experiences. Solitude is very important in my work as a mode of inspiration, but isolation is not good in this respect. I am not writing poetry about isolation.	Poetry	126
When I was young I had a moment of believing in the Communist doctrine. I wanted to save the world through Communism. Quite soon I understood that it doesn't work, but I've never pretended it didn't happen to me.		201
Someone sits at a table or lies on a sofa while staring motionless at a wall or ceiling. Once in a while this person writes down seven lines, only to cross out one of them 15 minutes later, and then another hour passes, during which nothing happens. Who could stand to watch this kind of thing?		202
I usually write for the individual reader -though I would like to have many such readers. There are some poets who write for people assembled in big rooms, so they can live through something collectively. I prefer my reader to take my poem and have a one-on-one relationship with it.		203
In the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence, not anyone's existence in this world.	Poetry	204
Each of us has a very rich nature and can look at things objectively, from a distance, and at the same time can have something more personal to say about them. I am trying to look at the world, and at myself, from many different points of view. I think many poets have this duality.		205
Take it not amiss, O speech, that I borrow weighty words, and later try hard to make them seem light.		206
This terrifying world is not devoid of charms, of the mornings that make waking up worthwhile.		207
After every war someone has to tidy up.		208
All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination.	Imagination	209
I'm drowning in papers.		210
Is a decision made in advance really any kind of choice.		211
I cannot imagine any writer who would not fight for his peace and quiet.		212
I don't believe I have a mission. Sometimes I really have a spiritual need to say something more general about the world, and sometimes something personal.		213
Sometimes I write quickly, sometimes I spend several weeks on a single poem. I would really love for readers not to be able to guess which of the poems took so much work!		214
I've reached the age of self-knowledge, so I don't know anything. People who claim that they know something are responsible for most of the fuss in the world.		215
I started earning a living as a poet rather early on.		216
Poetic talent doesn't operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry.		217
Poets yearn, of course, to be published, read, and understood, but they do little, if anything, to set themselves above the common herd and the daily grind.		218
I'm fighting against the bad poet who is prone to using too many words.		219
There's simply too much fuss about myself.		220
You have to remember all the time that there is a comical side to everything.		221
Sometimes I really have a spiritual need to say something more general about the world, and sometimes something personal.		222

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