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Top Joseph Brodsky Quotes

Browse top 44 most favorite famous quotes and sayings by Joseph Brodsky.

Favorite Joseph Brodsky Quotes

1. "After all, it is hard to master both life and work equally well. So if you are bound to fake one of them, it had better be life." ~ Joseph Brodsky
2. "Man is what he reads." ~ Joseph Brodsky
3. "Snobbery? But it's only a form of despair." ~ Joseph Brodsky
4. "For boredom speaks the language of time, and it is to teach you the most valuable lesson of your life - the lesson of your utter insignificance." ~ Joseph Brodsky
5. "Life is a game with many rules but no referee. One learns how to play it more by watching it than by consulting any book, including the holy book. Small wonder, then, that so many play dirty, that so few win, that so many lose." ~ Joseph Brodsky
6. "How delightful to find a friend in everyone." ~ Joseph Brodsky
7. "Life - the way it really is - is a battle not between Bad and Good but between Bad and Worse." ~ Joseph Brodsky
8. "A language is a more ancient and inevitable thing than any state." ~ Joseph Brodsky
9. "Poetry is rather an approach to things, to life, than it is typographical production." ~ Joseph Brodsky
10. "The real history of consciousness starts with one's first lie." ~ Joseph Brodsky
11. "For a writer only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language." ~ Joseph Brodsky
12. "What I like about cities is that everything is king size, the beauty and the ugliness." ~ Joseph Brodsky
13. "For the poet the credo or doctrine is not the point of arrival but is, on the contrary, the point of departure for the metaphysical journey." ~ Joseph Brodsky
14. "This is the generation whose first cry of life was the Hungarian uprising." ~ Joseph Brodsky
15. "For darkness restores what light cannot repair." ~ Joseph Brodsky
16. "Because every book of art, be it a poem or a cupola, is understandably a self-portrait of its author, we won't strain ourselves too hard trying to distinguish between the author's persona and the poem's lyrical hero. As a rule, such distinctions are quite meaningless, if only because a lyrical hero is invariably an author's self-projection." ~ Joseph Brodsky
17. "Bad literature is a form of treason." ~ Joseph Brodsky
18. "The eye identifies itself not with the body it belongs to but with the object of its attention." ~ Joseph Brodsky
19. "It's an abominable fallacy that suffering makes for greater art. Suffering blinds, deafens, ruins, and often kills. Osip Mandelstam was a great poet before the revolution. So was Anna Akhmatova, so was Marina Tsvetaeva. They would have become what they became even if none of the historical events that befell Russia in this century had taken place: because they were gifted. Basically, talent doesn't need history." ~ Joseph Brodsky
20. "Judge: And what is your occupation in general?Brodsky: Poet, poet-translator.Judge: And who recognized you to be a poet? Who put you in the ranks of poet?Brodsky: No one. And who put me in the ranks of humanity?Judge: Did you study it?...How to be a poet? Did you attempt to finish an insitute of higher learning...where they prepare...teachBrodsky: I did not think that it is given to one by education.Judge: By what then?Brodsky: I think that it is from God." ~ Joseph Brodsky
21. "Try not to pay attention to those who will try to make life miserable for you. There will be a lot of those--in the official capacity as well as the self-appointed. Suffer them if you can't escape them, but once you have steered clear of them, give them the shortest shrift possible. Above all, try to avoid telling stories about the unjust treatment you received at their hands; avoid it no matter how receptive your audience may be. Tales of this sort extend the existence of your antagonists...." ~ Joseph Brodsky
22. "secrecy is a hotbed of vanity" ~ Joseph Brodsky
23. "Dotknij mnie - pod palcami poczujesz rzep uschly,wilgoc wieczoru lub poranku, tetnokamieniolomu miasta, oddech stepowej pustki,tych, którzy juz nie zyja, lecz których pamietam.Dotknij mnie - a poczujesz pod czubkami palcówwszystko to, co istnieje poza mna, beze mnie,co nie wierzy mnie, mojej twarzy, memu paltu,wpisujac nas w swój bilans zawsze po stronie ujemnej." ~ Joseph Brodsky
24. "And geography blended with time equals destiny." ~ Joseph Brodsky
25. "The instinctive preference was to read rather than to act. No wonder our actual lives were more or less a shambles" ~ Joseph Brodsky
26. "If one's fated to be born in Caesar's Empire, let him live aloof, provincial, by the seashore..." ~ Joseph Brodsky
27. "An object, after all, is what makes infinity private." ~ Joseph Brodsky
28. "Out of Dostoevsky: Kafka. Out of Tolstoy: Margaret Mitchell.(in conversation, explaining his dislike for Tolstoy)" ~ Joseph Brodsky
29. "In the end, like the Almighty Himself, we make everything in our image, for want of a more reliable model; our artifacts tell more about ourselves than our confessions." ~ Joseph Brodsky
30. "...and love, as an act, lacks a verb" ~ Joseph Brodsky
31. "Buenas noches. Don't mind the roaches." ~ Joseph Brodsky
32. "[T]he longer you stay skeptical, doubtful, intellectually uncomfortable, the better it is for you." ~ Joseph Brodsky
33. "... Now to die of griefwould mean, I'm afraid, to die belatedly, while latecomersare unwelcome, particularly in the future. ..." ~ Joseph Brodsky
34. "The Last Judgement is the Last Judgement, but a human being who spent his life in Russia, has to be, without any hesitation, placed into Paradise." ~ Joseph Brodsky
35. "A glance leaves an imprint on anything it's dwelt on." ~ Joseph Brodsky
36. "It really does look like musical sheets, frayed at the edges, constantly played, coming to you in tidal scores, in bars of canals with innumerable obbligati of bridges, mullioned windows, or curved crownings of Coducci cathedrals, not to mention the violin necks of gondolas. In fact, the whole city, especially at night, resembles a gigantic orchestra, with dimly lit music stands of palazzi, with a restless chorus of waves, with the falsetto of a star in the winter sky." ~ Joseph Brodsky
37. "What gets left of a man amounts to a part. To his spoken part. To a part of speech" ~ Joseph Brodsky
38. "Jesli zalozyc, ze piekno jest taka dystrybucja swiatla, która najbardziej odpowiada naszej siatkówce, lza jest forma przyznania sie do niemoznosci zatrzymania przez siatkówke – a takze przez sama lze – tego piekna na stale. Milosc, zeby to tak podsumowac, ma predkosc swiatla; rozstanie – predkosc dzwieku" ~ Joseph Brodsky
39. "Pociagla twarz o rysach lewantynskich,dziobata cere ukrywaja baczki;kiedy wyjmuje papierosa z paczki,bezbarwny pierscien nad palcu rozblyskiemdwustuwatowym nagle wzrok poraza.Moja soczewka jest bardzo wrazliwa,mruze wiec oczy - i on sie odzywa,krztuszac sie dymem przy slowie "przepraszam".Styczen na Krymie. Czarnomorski brzegzima odwiedza jakby dla zabawy:nawet nie moze utrzymac sie sniegna ostrych klingach wysokiej agawy.Swieca pustkami restauracje. Dymipaskudnie brudny ichtiozaur na redziei zalatuje laurami zgnilymi."Nalac wam tego paskudztwa?" "Nalejcie."A wiec zmierzch, usmiech i karafka. W mrokugdzies w dali barman, zaciskajac dlonie,jak mlody delfin wznieca kregi wokólfeluki chamsa po brzeg wypelnionej.Czworokat okna. Zóltofiolet pylaodblaski garnków. Na tle ciemnej palmyleca sniezynki. Zatrzymaj sie chwilonie tyle piekna, co niepowtarzalna." ~ Joseph Brodsky
40. "A jesli ktos cie zapyta "kim jestes?", to odpowiedz"Ja jestem Nikt" - jak rzekl niegdys Polifemowi Odys." ~ Joseph Brodsky
41. "Liberdade é quando você esquece o nome do tirano." ~ Joseph Brodsky
42. "Szepcze "zegnaj", lecz komu to przekazac, nie wiem,Bo przeciez nie rozmawiam z martwa mara czy cieniem.On gdyby chcial przytaknac, chocby glowe sklonic,W odpowiedzi nie poda nawet pustej dloni.Ale w tym sie juz nowy zawiera element,bo przewage nie glos ma, ale usta nieme,jak u ryby miarowo otwierane dlawydobycia w wydechu bezdzwiecznego "la".Akwarium, jak wiadomo, jest takim zaciszem,gdzie sie nigdy piosenek i placzu nie slyszy,gdzie reka zawieszona i znieruchomialazmienia wlasnosci - wkrótce pletwa by sie stala.A wiec do ciebie - która umialas pokonacte mokre, wyciagniete ku tobie ramionanereid z wód rodzimych - ja unoszac brewpisze o tym, co moze w zylach zmrozic krew,ze kondensat cierpienia i bólu przekroczylpowierzchnie mózgu. Nie da sie pamieci z oczuwykluc. Za zamknietymi ustami sie pietrzyto cierpienie i krzyczy w rozpaczy do wnetrza." ~ Joseph Brodsky
43. "Zawsze szuka ratunku ten, komu swiat runali potrzebna jest pomoc, bo pogubil nogi,a w dodatku nie widzi sniegu. Pólnoc. Pólnoc.Wszystko to prowokuje do tego stwierdzenia,które noca z podwójna ostroscia sie jawi:jedni sie nie spalaja w tych samych plomieniach,które z innych tymczasem moga pozostawicpolowe ich postaci zaledwie (...)" ~ Joseph Brodsky
44. "When hit by boredom, let yourself be crushed by it; submerge, hit bottom. In general, with things unpleasant, the rule is: The sooner you hit bottom, the faster you surface. The idea here is to exact a full look at the worst. The reason boredom deserves such scrutiny is that it represents pure, undiluted time in all its repetitive, redundant, monotonous splendor.Boredom is your window on the properties of time that one tends to ignore to the likely peril of one's mental equilibrium. It is your window on time's infinity. Once this window opens, don't try to shut it; on the contrary, throw it wide open." ~ Joseph Brodsky

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Today's Quote

If people were Superior to Animals, they'd take better care of the world"
Author: Benjamin Hoff

What Did Joseph Brodsky Talk About?

Able
Thin
Era
Con
Wit
Self
Ten
Act
Ally
End
Ego
Less
Poet
Son
Win
Tan
Sky
Tell
Rule
Rest
Ours
Language
Here
Hen
Ear
Bar
Won

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