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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.

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
Evil
Creed
Nostalgia
Arguments
Creeds
Behalf
Exhausted
Utters
Argument
Ennui
Rather
Fervor

More quotes by 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.
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The Constitution doesn't mention rain.
Joseph Brodsky
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A man should know about himself two or three things: whether he is a coward whether he is an honest man or given to lies whether he is an ambitious man. One should define oneself first of all in those terms, and only then in terms of culture, race, creed.
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For darkness restores what light cannot repair.
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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Man is what he reads.
Joseph Brodsky
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Love itself is the most elitist of passions. It acquires its stereoscopic substance and perspective only in the context of culture, for it takes up more place in the mind than it does in bed. Outside of that setting it falls flat into one-dimensional fiction.
Joseph Brodsky
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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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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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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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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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When I'm not writing or reading, I'm thinking about both.
Joseph Brodsky
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On the whole, love comes with the speed of light separation, with that of sound.
Joseph Brodsky
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I'm a bad Jew, a bad Russian, a bad everything.
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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The fact that we are living does not mean we are not sick.
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.
Joseph Brodsky
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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.
Joseph Brodsky
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I always adhered to the idea that God is time, or at least that His spirit is.
Joseph Brodsky
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A poet is a combination of an instrument and a human being in one person, with the former gradually taking over the latter. The sensation of this takeover is responsible for timbre the realization of it, for destiny.
Joseph Brodsky