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

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The Constitution doesn't mention rain.
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Racism? But isn't it only a form of misanthropy?
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In general, with things unpleasant, the rule is: The sooner you hit bottom, the faster you surface.
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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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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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When I'm not writing or reading, I'm thinking about both.
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Who included me among the ranks of the human race?
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I'm not trying to be ridiculous or funny, but it was rather pleasant to find yourself in isolation, in solitary.
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I was quite happy in Arkhangelsk.Subsequently, I was sent to a village. I liked it in its own way because it sounded to me very much like the tradition of a hired man in any world-class poem. That's what I was, a hired man. I was working for a collective farm.
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The real history of consciousness starts with one's first lie.
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As failures go, attempting to recall the past is like trying to grasp the meaning of existence. Both make one feel like a baby clutching at a basketball: one's palms keep sliding off.
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The fact that we are living does not mean we are not sick.
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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 delirium and horror of the East. The dusty catastrophe of Asia. Green only on the banner of the Prophet. Nothing grows here except mustaches.
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I don't have principles. I have nerves.
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I don't want to dive into that mud slide, which is what I consider the literary process.
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Poems, novels - these things belong to the nation, to the culture and the people. They've been stolen from the people and now the stolen things are being returned to their owners, but I don't think their owners should be grateful to receive them.
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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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I always adhered to the idea that God is time, or at least that His spirit is.
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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.
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