1. That reason is a gift of God and that we should believe in its ability to comprehend the world.
2. That they have been wrong who undermined confidence in reason by enumerating the forces that want to usurp it: class struggle, libido, will to power.
3. That we should be aware that our being is enclosed within the circle of its perceptions, but not reduce reality to dreams and the phantoms of the mind.
4. That truth is a proof of freedom and that the sign of slavery is the lie.
5. That the proper attitude toward being is respect and that we must, therefore, avoid the company of people who debase being with their sarcasm, and praise nothingness.
6. That, even if we are accused of arrogance, it is the case that in the life of the mind a strict hierarchy is necessary.
7. That intellectuals in the twentieth century were afflicted with the habit of baratin, i.e., irresponsible jabber.
8. That in the hierarchy of human activities the arts stand higher than philosophy, and yet bad philosophy can spoil art.
9. That the objective truth exists; namely, out of two contrary assertions, one is true, one false, except in strictly defined cases when maintaining contradiction is legitimate.
10. That quite independently of the fate of religious denominations we should preserve a "philosophical faith," i.e., a belief in transcendence as a measure of humanity.
11. That time excludes and sentences to oblivion only those works of our hands and minds which prove worthless in raising up, century after century, the huge edifice of civilization.
12. That in our lives we should not succumb to despair because of our errors and our sins, for the past is never closed down and receives the meaning we give it by our subsequent acts.
—Most distinguished voyager, what was your eon like?
—Comic. Terror is forgotten.
Only the ridiculous is remembered by posterity.
Death from a wound, from a noose, from starvation
Is one death, but folly is uncounted and new every year.
Tag: from-the-rising-of-the-sun
And when people cease to believe that there is good and evil,
Only beauty will call to them and save them
So that they will know how to say: this is true and that is false.
All of us yearn for the highest wisdom, but we have to rely on ourselves in the end.
Czesław MiłoszNot soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year,
I felt a door opening in me and I entered
the clarity of early morning.
One after another my former lives were departing,
like ships, together with their sorrow.
And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas
assigned to my brush came closer,
ready now to be described better than they were before.
I was not separated from people,
grief and pity joined us.
We forget—I kept saying—that we are all children of the King.
For where we come from there is no division
into Yes and No, into is, was, and will be.
We were miserable, we used no more than a hundredth part
of the gift we received for our long journey.
Moments from yesterday and from centuries ago—
a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes before a mirror
of polished metal, a lethal musket shot, a caravel
staving its hull against a reef—they dwell in us,
waiting for a fulfillment.
I knew, always, that I would be a worker in the vineyard,
as are all men and women living at the same time,
whether they are aware of it or not.
What is poetry which does not save nations or people?
Czesław MiłoszShe got out at Raspail. I was left behind with the immensity of existing things. A sponge, suffering because it cannot saturate itself; a river, suffering because reflections of clouds and trees are not clouds and trees.
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The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.
Czesław MiłoszTag: czeslaw-milosz
I still think too much about the mothers And ask what is man born of woman. He curls himself up and protects his head While he is kicked by heavy boots; on fire and running, He burns with bright flame; a bulldozer sweeps him into a clay pit. Her child. Embracing a teddy bear. Conceived in ecstasy.
Czesław MiłoszLearning
To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life.
Tag: life learning humility self-knowledge
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