Quote

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

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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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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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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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I grew up in the sort of cultural milieu that always regarded conversations about the political discourse as tremendously low-brow.
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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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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.
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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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Bad literature is a form of treason.
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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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In the West you have every opportunity for civilization to triumph.
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In Russia, the moment a person opens his mouth you know where he's from. There's the uniformity of experience of an individual in Russia. When you're about 7 years old you get into school and you get put in this factory or this bureaucracy or whatever. The options are computable. Here it's tremendously diverse.
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The fact that we are living does not mean we are not sick.
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How delightful to find a friend in everyone.
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The real history of consciousness starts with one's first lie.
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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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On the whole, love comes with the speed of light separation, with that of sound.
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Poetry is what is gained in translation.
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Who included me among the ranks of the human race?
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I don't want to dive into that mud slide, which is what I consider the literary process.
Joseph Brodsky