Top 11 Quotes & Sayings by Zbigniew Herbert

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert.

Last updated on April 20, 2025.

Zbigniew Herbert was a Polish poet, essayist, drama writer and moralist. He is one of the best known and the most translated post-war Polish writers. While he was first published in the 1950s, soon after he voluntarily ceased submitting most of his works to official Polish government publications. He resumed publication in the 1980s, initially in the underground press. Since the 1960s, he was nominated several times for the Nobel Prize in literature. His books have been translated into 38 languages.

Polish - Poet | October 29, 1924 - July 28, 1998

Source: Wikipedia

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

Zbigniew Herbert

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

Zbigniew Herbert

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

Zbigniew Herbert

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

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

Zbigniew Herbert

Inanimate objects are always correct and cannot, unfortunately, be reproached with anything. I have never observed a chair shift from one foot to another, or a bed rear on its hind legs. And tables, even when they are tired, will not dare to bend their knees. I suspect that objects do this from pedagogical considerations, to reprove us constantly for our instability.

Zbigniew Herbert

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

Zbigniew Herbert

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

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

The dead have need of fairy tales too.

Zbigniew Herbert

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