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There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

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
Worse
Ignorance
Censoring
Crime
Censored
Education
Illiteracy
Books
Banned
Reading
Censorship
Book
Crimes
Burning

More quotes by Joseph Brodsky

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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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When I'm not writing or reading, I'm thinking about both.
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Every writing career starts as a personal quest for sainthood, for self-betterment. Sooner or later, and as a rule quite soon, a man discovers that his pen accomplishes a lot more than his soul.
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Every individual ought to know at least one poet from cover to cover: if not as a guide through the world, then as a yardstick for the language.
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An object, after all, is what makes infinity private.
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Poetry is what is gained in translation.
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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.
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Racism? But isn't it only a form of misanthropy?
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I do not believe in political movements. I believe in personal movement, that movement of the soul when a man who looks at himself is so ashamed that he tries to make some sort of change - within himself, not on the outside.
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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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If they had wanted to punish me, they should have kept me in a communal apartment. Then I would have become a wreck.
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The eye identifies itself not with the body it belongs to but with the object of its attention.
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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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Bad literature is a form of treason.
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What I like about cities is that everything is king size, the beauty and the ugliness.
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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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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
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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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I don't have principles. I have nerves.
Joseph Brodsky
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Man is what he reads.
Joseph Brodsky