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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

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Joseph Brodsky
Age: 55 †
Born: 1940
Born: May 24
Died: 1996
Died: January 25
Author
Dramaturge
Essayist
Playwright
Poet
Translator
Writer
St. Petersburg
Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky
Masters
Better
Wells
Well
Equally
Hard
Bound
Work
Fake
Life
Bounds
Master

More quotes by Joseph Brodsky

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There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
Joseph Brodsky
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If a poet has any obligation toward society, it is to write well. Being in the minority, he has no other choice. Failing this duty, he sinks into oblivion. Society, on the other hand, has no obligation toward the poet.
Joseph Brodsky
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It would be enough for me to have the system of a jury of twelve versus the system of one judge as a basis for preferring the U.S. to the Soviet Union. I would prefer the country you can leave to the country you cannot.
Joseph Brodsky
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I'm neither Catholic not Protestant. Protestant sounds good but I don't think I am.
Joseph Brodsky
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Poetry is what is gained in translation.
Joseph Brodsky
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In general, with things unpleasant, the rule is: The sooner you hit bottom, the faster you surface.
Joseph Brodsky
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Language and, presumably, literature are more ancient and inevitable, more durable than any form of social organization. The revulsion, irony, or indifference often expressed by literature toward the state is essentially the reaction of the permanent-better yet, the infinite-against the temporary, against the finite.
Joseph Brodsky
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The real history of consciousness starts with one's first lie.
Joseph Brodsky
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There's nothing as dear as the sight of ruins.
Joseph Brodsky
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I don't have principles. I have nerves.
Joseph Brodsky
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Tragedy, as you know, is always a fait accompli, whereas terror always has to do with anticipation, with man's recognition of hisown negative potential--with his sense of what he is capable of.
Joseph Brodsky
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Racism? But isn't it only a form of misanthropy?
Joseph Brodsky
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Robert Frost's triumph was not being at John Kennedy's inauguration ceremony, but the day when he put the last period on West-Running Brook.
Joseph Brodsky
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Cherish your human connections: your relationships with friends and family. Even your super weirdo creep cousin.
Joseph Brodsky
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What I like about cities is that everything is king size, the beauty and the ugliness.
Joseph Brodsky
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If there is anything good about exile, it is that it teaches one humility. It accelerates one’s drift into isolation, an absolute perspective. Into the condition at which all one is left with is oneself and one’s language, with nobody or nothing in between. Exile brings you overnight where it would normally take a lifetime to go.
Joseph Brodsky
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In general, in America, every discourse in literature in 15 minutes degenerates into a conversation about ethics, morality and this and that. The Holocaust and the consequences of it. Well, I find it terribly boring, predictable and unimportant, because what matters about literature is esthetic achievement.
Joseph Brodsky
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I am quite prepared to die here [in NY]. It doesn't matter at all. I don't know better places, or perhaps if I do I am not prepared to make a move.
Joseph Brodsky
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Were we to choose our leaders on the basis of their reading experience and not their political programs, there would be much less grief on earth. I believe ... that for someone who has read a lot of Dickens to shoot his like in the name of an idea is harder than for someone who has read no Dickens.
Joseph Brodsky
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I grew up in the sort of cultural milieu that always regarded conversations about the political discourse as tremendously low-brow.
Joseph Brodsky