Zbigniew Herbert Quotes

#1. A craftsman must probe to the very bottom of cruelty.

Zbigniew Herbert

#2. I turn to history not for lessons but to confront my experience with the experience of others and to win for myself a sense of responsibility for the state of the human conscience.

Zbigniew Herbert

#3. I could write a treatise on the sudden transformation of life into archaeology

Zbigniew Herbert

#4. I've been broke more than I've been rich. I like being in the middle way better.

Reagan Gomez-Preston

#5. The dead have need of fairy tales too.

Zbigniew Herbert

#6. I'm a very routine-oriented guy.

Curt Schilling

#7. I do not turn to history to draw from it an easy lesson of hope, but to confront my experience with that of others, to acquire something I might call universal compassion, and also a sense of responsibility, responsibility for the state of my conscience.

Zbigniew Herbert

#8. Be courageous when the mind deceives you Be courageous In the final account only this is important

Zbigniew Herbert

#9. Lord
I thank you for creating the world beautiful and various

and for allowing me in Your fathomless goodness to visit places which were not the sites of my daily torments

Zbigniew Herbert

#10. You think I want to hurt her? Do you think it makes me happy to see the little bit of trust she had in me die today?

Sara B. Larson

#11. How do you stop longing for what you absolutely know you can't get? Which really means: How do you absolutely know you can't-and won't-get it, not ever? How do you pinch out that wisp of feeble, ruthless hope?

Leigh Newman

#12. I thank You Lord for creating the world beautiful and various and if this is Your seduction I am seduced for good and past all forgiveness

Zbigniew Herbert

#13. How sweet the name of Jesus sounds In a believer's ear! It soothes his sorrows, heals his wounds, And drives away his fear.

John Newton

#14. Even if we love someone very much, at times it happens that we forget about it.

Zbigniew Herbert

#15. People who ask "Can I ask you a question?" Didn't really give me a choice, did ya there buddy?

George Carlin

#16. Authors I've longed to write like - but realize I actually can't even begin to - include Poe, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Kafka, Daniil Kharms, Witold Gombrowicz, Emily Dickinson, Robert Walser, Barbara Comyns, Ntozake Shange, Camille Laurens, Zbigniew Herbert, and Jose Saramago.

Helen Oyeyemi

#17. Forgive me also that I didn't fight like Lord Byron for the happiness of captive peoples that I watched only risings of the moon and museums

Zbigniew Herbert

#18. there's a terrible silence
before a predator's night

sometimes
an absurd airplane
appears in the sky

it throws out leaflets
calling for surrender

I would be happy to surrender
but I've no one to surrender to

Zbigniew Herbert

#19. My first band, Kid Wicked, we did half covers and half originals.

Sebastian Bach

#20. Be patient with everyone you meet, for you may never know whether your words were the last they ever heard.

L.J. Kane

#21. I can touch my eyebrows with my nose. Look at that! That's not normal. I shouldn't be able to do that.

Josh Thomas

#22. Study the world's skin before you set out to look for its heart.

Zbigniew Herbert

#23. No time to grieve for roses when the forests are burning.

Zbigniew Herbert

#24. And if the City falls and one survives
he shall carry the City within on the roads of exile
he shall be the City

Zbigniew Herbert

#25. Hang there like fruit, my soul,
Till the tree die.

William Shakespeare

#26. We fall asleep on words / we wake among words

Zbigniew Herbert

#27. A falcon who chases a warlike crane can only hope for a life of pain.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez