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.
Joseph Brodsky

Man is what he reads.
Joseph Brodsky

It is well to read everything of something, and something of everything.
Joseph Brodsky

How delightful to find a friend in everyone.
Joseph Brodsky

The real history of consciousness starts with one's first lie.
Joseph Brodsky

Life - the way it really is - is a battle not between Bad and Good but between Bad and Worse.
Joseph Brodsky

I do not believe in political movements. I believe in personal movement, that movement of the soul when a man who looks at himself is so ashamed that he tries to make some sort of change - within himself, not on the outside.
Joseph Brodsky

Life is a game with many rules but no referee. One learns how to play it more by watching it than by consulting any book, including the holy book. Small wonder, then, that so many play dirty, that so few win, that so many lose.
Joseph Brodsky