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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.
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
Negative
Accompli
Capable
Fait
Sense
Anticipation
Always
Whereas
Men
Recognition
Potential
Terror
Tragedy
More quotes by Joseph Brodsky
I grew up in the sort of cultural milieu that always regarded conversations about the political discourse as tremendously low-brow.
Joseph Brodsky
What I like about cities is that everything is king size, the beauty and the ugliness.
Joseph Brodsky
I'm a bad Jew, a bad Russian, a bad everything.
Joseph Brodsky
In the West you have every opportunity for civilization to triumph.
Joseph Brodsky
Bad literature is a form of treason.
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
For a writer only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.
Joseph Brodsky
The eye identifies itself not with the body it belongs to but with the object of its attention.
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
Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse
Joseph Brodsky
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
After having exhausted all the arguments on behalf of evil, one utters the creed's dictums with nostalgia rather than with fervor.
Joseph Brodsky
If I can get somewhere, I'm all right. If not, I'm miserable.
Joseph Brodsky
A language is a more ancient and inevitable thing than any state.
Joseph Brodsky
Robert Frost's triumph was not being at John Kennedy's inauguration ceremony, but the day when he put the last period on West-Running Brook.
Joseph Brodsky
After all, it is hard to master both life and work equally well. So if you are bound to fake one of them, it had better be life.
Joseph Brodsky
The formula for prison is a lack of space counterbalanced by a surplus of time. This is what really bothers you, that you can't win. Prison is lack of alternatives, and the telescopic predictability of the future is what drives you crazy.
Joseph Brodsky
There's nothing as dear as the sight of ruins.
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
Perhaps the best proof of the Almighty's existence is that we never know when we are to die.
Joseph Brodsky
