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

More quotes by Joseph Brodsky

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There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
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Poetry is what is gained in translation.
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The Constitution doesn't mention rain.
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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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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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Every individual ought to know at least one poet from cover to cover: if not as a guide through the world, then as a yardstick for the language.
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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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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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The fact that we are living does not mean we are not sick.
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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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Man is what he reads.
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An object, after all, is what makes infinity private.
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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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Racism? But isn't it only a form of misanthropy?
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The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even - if you will - eccentricity. That is, something that can't be feigned, faked, imitated something even a seasoned imposter couldn't be happy with.
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Who included me among the ranks of the human race?
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Cherish your human connections: your relationships with friends and family. Even your super weirdo creep cousin.
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