Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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.
Joseph Brodsky
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Beauty
Solace
Eye
Ugliness
Body
Fails
Find
Perceive
Command
Alias
Failing
Aliases
Virtue
Adjusts
Create
Commands
More quotes by Joseph Brodsky
On the whole, love comes with the speed of light separation, with that of sound.
Joseph Brodsky
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.
Joseph Brodsky
I got caught up in the proletariat the way Marx describes it.
Joseph Brodsky
When I'm not writing or reading, I'm thinking about both.
Joseph Brodsky
Who included me among the ranks of the human race?
Joseph Brodsky
There's nothing as dear as the sight of ruins.
Joseph Brodsky
I don't want to dive into that mud slide, which is what I consider the literary process.
Joseph Brodsky
A language is a more ancient and inevitable thing than any state.
Joseph Brodsky
An object, after all, is what makes infinity private.
Joseph Brodsky
The real history of consciousness starts with one's first lie.
Joseph Brodsky
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
After having exhausted all the arguments on behalf of evil, one utters the creed's dictums with nostalgia rather than with fervor.
Joseph Brodsky
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
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
If they had wanted to punish me, they should have kept me in a communal apartment. Then I would have become a wreck.
Joseph Brodsky
I'm a bad Jew, a bad Russian, a bad everything.
Joseph Brodsky
Man is what he reads.
Joseph Brodsky
My poems getting published in Russia doesn't make me feel in any fashion, to tell you the truth. I'm not trying to be coy, but it doesn't tickle my ego.
Joseph Brodsky
The Constitution doesn't mention rain.
Joseph Brodsky
In the West you have every opportunity for civilization to triumph.
Joseph Brodsky
