All imperfection is easier to tolerate if served up in small doses.
Wislawa SzymborskaRead
All is mine but nothing owned, nothing owned for memory, and mine only while I look.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the nature of ownership and the transient experience of possessing things in life.
Wislawa Szymborska's quote suggests that true ownership is an illusion; we may feel we possess things, but in reality, they are only ours as long as we are present and aware of them. This implies that our experiences and memories are fleeting, and material possession does not equate to lasting fulfillment or control over our lives.
Themes
OwnershipTransienceExperienceMemoryPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about living in the moment, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of experiences over material possessions.
More from Wislawa Szymborska
All quotes βI started earning a living as a poet rather early on.
Wislawa SzymborskaRead
But they know about us, they know, the four corners, and the chairs nearby us. Discerning shadows also know, and even the table keeps quiet.
Wislawa SzymborskaRead
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.
Wislawa SzymborskaRead
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.
Wislawa SzymborskaRead
Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.
Wislawa SzymborskaRead
Similar quotes
The layman always means, when he says "reality" that he is speaking of something self-evidently known; whereas to me it seems the most important and exceedingly difficult task of our time is to work on the construction of a new idea of reality.
Wolfgang PauliRead
Americans love to pick up, move on, start over. But instead of being somebody fresh and new, they become somebody lonely and lost, or, far too often these days, they become nobody at all, a machine for satisfying hunger, without loyalty or honor or duty.
Orson Scott CardRead
Withdraw allegiance from the old categories of the Negative (law, limit, castration, lack, lacuna), which the Western thought has so long held sacred as a form of power and an access to reality. Prefer what is positive and multiple, difference over uniformity, flows over unities, mobile arrangements over systems. Believe that what is productive is not sedentary but nomadic.
Michel FoucaultRead
Fear, prejudice, malice, and the love of approbation bribe a thousand men where gold bribes one.
Robert Green IngersollRead
Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick, and I will abstain from all intentional wrong-doing and harm, especially from abusing the bodies of man or woman, bond or free. And whatsoever I shall see or hear in the course of my profession, as well as outside my profession in my intercourse with men, if it be what should not be published abroad, I will never divulge, holding such things to be holy secrets.
HippocratesRead
It was hard to reconcile the drumbeats and lifted voices in the night with my memories of flames and the screams of dying men. How could humanity range so effortlessly from the sublime to the savage and back again?
Robin HobbRead