Quote

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.

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
East
Mustaches
Horror
Dusty
Green
Delirium
Except
Mustache
Grows
Banner
Nothing
Catastrophe
Asia
Prophet

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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.
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For darkness restores what light cannot repair.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse
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I sit in the dark. And it would be hard to figure out which is worse the dark inside, or the darkness out.
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I'm neither Catholic not Protestant. Protestant sounds good but I don't think I am.
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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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In the West you have every opportunity for civilization to triumph.
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The Constitution doesn't mention rain.
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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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Racism? But isn't it only a form of misanthropy?
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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.
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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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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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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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Every life has a file, if you will.
Joseph Brodsky
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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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