Top 70 Wisława Szymborska Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I am who I am. A coincidence no less unthinkable than any other.”

— Wisława Szymborska

2. “The joy of writing. The power of preserving. Revenge of a mortal hand.”

— Wisława Szymborska

3. “Keep up the good work, if only for a while, if only for the twinkling of a tiny galaxy.”

— Wisława Szymborska

4. “You can find the entire cosmos lurking in its least remarkable objects.”

— Wisława Szymborska

5. “When I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past. When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it.”

— Wisława Szymborska

6. “Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice.”

— Wisława Szymborska

7. “Nothing’s a gift, it’s all on loan.”

— Wisława Szymborska

8. “All imperfection is easier to tolerate if served up in small doses.”

— Wisława Szymborska

9. “And whatever I do will become forever what I’ve done.”

— Wisława Szymborska

10. “Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still.”

— Wisława Szymborska

11. “I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.”

— Wisława Szymborska

12. “I like being near the top of a mountain. One can’t get lost here.”

— Wisława Szymborska

13. “I am a tarsier and a tarsier’s son, the grandson and great-grandson of tarsiers, a tiny creature, made up of two pupils and whatever simply could not be left out...”

— Wisława Szymborska

14. “I’m working on the world, revised, improved edition, featuring fun for fools blues for brooders, combs for bald pates, tricks for old dogs.”

— Wisława Szymborska

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

— Wisława Szymborska

16. “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.”

— Wisława Szymborska

17. “I’m one-time-only to the marrow of my bones.”

— Wisława Szymborska

18. “It’s just not easy to explain to someone else what you don’t understand yourself.”

— Wisława Szymborska

19. “After every war someone has to tidy up.”

— Wisława Szymborska

20. “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.”

— Wisława Szymborska

21. “I’m drowning in papers.”

— Wisława Szymborska

22. “Any knowledge that doesn’t lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.”

— Wisława Szymborska

23. “All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination. Even the richest, most surprising and wild imagination is not as rich, wild and surprising as reality. The task of the poet is to pick singular threads from this dense, colorful fabric.”

— Wisława Szymborska

24. “Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.”

— Wisława Szymborska

25. “Out of every hundred people, those who always know better: fifty-two.”

— Wisława Szymborska

26. “No day copies yesterday, no two nights will teach what bliss is in precisely the same way, with precisely the same kisses.”

— Wisława Szymborska

27. “I don’t know the role I’m playing. I only know it’s mine, non-convertible.”

— Wisława Szymborska

28. “Every beginning, after all, is nothing but a sequel, and the book of events is always open in the middle.”

— Wisława Szymborska

29. “Carry on, then, if only for the moment that it takes a tiny galaxy to blink!”

— Wisława Szymborska

30. “Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.”

— Wisława Szymborska

31. “No one in my family has ever died of love. What happened, happened, but nothing myth-inspiring.”

— Wisława Szymborska

32. “They say the first love’s most important. That’s very romantic, but not my experience.”

— Wisława Szymborska

33. “Today when two people decide upon a thoughtless and precipitate abbreviation of the physical space between them, they think, at least at that moment, that they’re mutually attracted and drawn together by an overwhelming force.”

— Wisława Szymborska

34. “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.”

— Wisława Szymborska

35. “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.”

— Wisława Szymborska

36. “I’m fighting against the bad poet who is prone to using too many words.”

— Wisława Szymborska

37. “It’s a well-known fact: in order to follow doctor’s orders, you have to be healthy as a horse.”

— Wisława Szymborska

38. “My choices are rejections, since there is no other way, but what I reject is more numerous, denser, more demanding than before. A little poem, a sigh, at the cost of indescribable losses.”

— Wisława Szymborska

39. “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 lifes wisdom.”

— Wisława Szymborska

40. “Though I may deny poets their monopoly on inspiration, I still place them in a select group of Fortune’s darlings.”

— Wisława Szymborska

41. “We’re extremely fortunate not to know precisely the kind of world we live in. One would have to live a long, long time, unquestionably longer than the world itself.”

— Wisława Szymborska

42. “All is mine but nothing owned, nothing owned for memory, and mine only while I look.”

— Wisława Szymborska

43. “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.”

— Wisława Szymborska

44. “God was finally going to believe in a man both good and strong, but good and strong are still two different men.”

— Wisława Szymborska

45. “All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination.”

— Wisława Szymborska

46. “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.”

— Wisława Szymborska

47. “I’d have to be really quick to describe clouds – a split second’s enough for them to start being something else.”

— Wisława Szymborska

48. “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.”

— Wisława Szymborska

49. “They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one’s behind me, anyway.”

— Wisława Szymborska

50. “I’m old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.”

— Wisława Szymborska

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