Quote

Snobbery? But it's only a form of despair.

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
Despair
Form
Snobbery

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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.
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How delightful to find a friend in everyone.
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Who included me among the ranks of the human race?
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Bad literature is a form of treason.
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Cherish your human connections: your relationships with friends and family. Even your super weirdo creep cousin.
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When the eye fails to find beauty-alias solace-it commands the body to create it, or, failing that, adjusts itself to perceive virtue in ugliness.
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What I like about cities is that everything is king size, the beauty and the ugliness.
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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.
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Perhaps the best proof of the Almighty's existence is that we never know when we are to die.
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After having exhausted all the arguments on behalf of evil, one utters the creed's dictums with nostalgia rather than with fervor.
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I don't believe in that country any longer. I'm not interested. I'm writing in the language, and I like the language.
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The Constitution doesn't mention rain.
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The real history of consciousness starts with one's first lie.
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When Thomas Mann arrived in California from Germany, they asked him about German literature. And he said, 'German literature is where I am.' It's really a bit grand, but if a German can afford it, I can afford it.
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If I can get somewhere, I'm all right. If not, I'm miserable.
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I don't have principles. I have nerves.
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I always adhered to the idea that God is time, or at least that His spirit is.
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I'm a bad Jew, a bad Russian, a bad everything.
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I'm neither Catholic not Protestant. Protestant sounds good but I don't think I am.
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For a writer only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.
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