Quotes from Wis?awa Szymborska

A ja nie wiem i nie wiem i trzymam si? tego jak zbawiennej por?czy.

A mnie tak si? z?o?y?o, ?e jestem przy tobie. I doprawdy nie widz? w tym nic zwyczajnego.

My identifying features are rapture and despair.

Why do we treat the fleeting day with so much needless fear and sorrow? It's in its nature not to stay: Today is always gone tomorrow.

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.

After every war someone has to clean up. Things won't straighten themselves up, after all.

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

Read good poetry and read it well, tracing the countless incarnations of every word. These are after all the same words lying dead in dictionaries or leading a gray life in speech. Then why do they shine like new in poems, as if the poet had just discovered them?

At seventeen we imitate everything except ourselves.

Poetry (whatever we may say) is, was, and will always be a game. And as very child knows, all games have rules. So why do grown-ups forget?

Even boredom must be described with passion.

Such stories may predominate in daily life, but when literature starts taking cues from statistics, it seals its own fate.

M??czyzna miaÅ' poglÄ…dy – kobieta nadal tylko widzimisiÄ™, odpowiednikiem jego silnej woli byÅ' jej babski upór, a jego przezornoÅ›ci – jej wyrachowanie, a w sytuacjach, w których m??czyznÄ™ zwano taktykiem, kobieta pozostawaÅ'a intrygantkÄ…

Each human act has countless causes. The author works to reveal these causes.

Die - you can't do that to a cat... Something doesn't start at its usual time. Something doesn't happen as it should. Someone was always, always here, then suddenly disappeared and stubbornly stays disappeared.

The most important word in our planet's lexicon is why. We suspect this is true of other galaxies too.

We leven langer, maar minder nauwkeurig en in kortere zinnen.

Las aves domésticas se distinguen de las de corral en que las guardamos en jaulas exclusivamente para satisfacer el placer estético. El nuestro, claro. Del placer que sienten las aves condenadas a ver a sus dueños, no sé nada.

Pardon me, deserts, that I don't rush to you bearing a spoonful of water.

Pero cómo contestar a preguntas nunca hechas, si, además, una es para vosotras tan nadie.

I know how to handle misfortune, how to take bad news, I can minimize injustice, lighten up God's absence, or pick the widow's veil that suits your face.

You're still a young man/woman. It's not too late to learn hw to unwind. Who said you have to take it on the chin?