Joseph Brodsky Quotes - BrainyQuote

Cherish your human connections: your relationships with friends and family. Joseph Brodsky

Family, Friends And Family, Friends

Venice is eternity itself. Joseph Brodsky

Venice, Eternity, Itself

A person sets out to write a poem for a variety of reasons: to win the heart of his beloved; to express his attitude toward the reality surrounding him, be it a landscape or a state; to capture his state of mind at a given instant; to leave - as he thinks at that moment - a trace on the earth. Joseph Brodsky

Attitude, Heart, Moment, Mind, Win

No man-made system is perfect, and the system of oppression is no exception. It is subject to fatigue, to cracks, which you are the likelier to discover the longer your term. Joseph Brodsky

Perfect, You, Oppression, Your, System

After the last line of a poem, nothing follows except literary criticism. Joseph Brodsky

Criticism, Nothing, Line, Last, Poem

The mechanics of love imply some sort of bridge between the sensual and the spiritual, sometimes to the point of deification; the notion of an afterlife is implicit not only in our couplings, but also in our separations. Joseph Brodsky

Love, Spiritual, Bridge, Sometimes, Only

I was fortunate enough to write about things I really love, and love can be very analytic. Joseph Brodsky

Love, Enough, Things, Fortunate, Write

Who included me among the ranks of the human race? Joseph Brodsky

Funny, Me, Race, Human, Human Race, Who

Translation is not original creation - that is what one must remember. In translation, some loss is inevitable. Joseph Brodsky

Loss, Remember, Creation, Inevitable

The concept of historical necessity is the product of rational thought and arrived in Russia by the Western route. The idea of the noble savage, of an inherently good human nature hampered by bad institutions, of the ideal state, of social justice and so forth - none of these originated or blossomed on the banks of the Volga. Joseph Brodsky

Nature, Justice, Good, Thought, Bad

Top 10
Joseph Brodsky
Quotes

For boredom speaks the language of time, and it is to teach you the most valuable lesson of your life - the lesson of your utter insignificance. Joseph Brodsky

Life, Time, Language, Boredom, You, Your

Snobbery? But it's only a form of despair. Joseph Brodsky

Despair, Only, Snobbery, Form

I like the idea of isolation. I like the reality of it. You realize what you are... not that the knowledge is inevitably rewarding. Joseph Brodsky

Knowledge, Reality, Isolation, You, Like

Because civilizations are finite, in the life of each of them there comes a moment when the center ceases to hold. What keeps them at such times from disintegration is not legions but language. Joseph Brodsky

Life, Moment, Language, Because, Hold

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

Life, Good, Battle, Bad, Way, Worse

Evil is a sucker for solidity. It always goes for big numbers, for confident granite, for ideological purity, for drilled armies and balanced sheets. Joseph Brodsky

Evil, Numbers, Confident, Always, Purity

I remember myself, age five, sitting on a porch overlooking a very muddy road. The day was rainy. I was wearing rubber boots, yellow - no, not yellow, green - and for all I know, I'm still there. Joseph Brodsky

Age, Myself, Day, Green, Yellow, Road

Bad politics make for bad morals. Joseph Brodsky

Politics, Morals, Bad, Make

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

History, Lie, Real, First, Consciousness

Basically, it's hard for me to assess myself, a hardship not only prompted by the immodesty of the enterprise, but because one is not capable of assessing himself, let alone his work. However, if I were to summarize, my main interest is the nature of time. That's what interests me most of all. What time can do to a man. Joseph Brodsky

Work, Nature, Alone, Man, Time, Myself

An ethical man doesn't need a consensus of his allies in order to act against something he finds reprehensible. Joseph Brodsky

Man, Ethical, Need, Order, Act, Against

I belong to Russian literature, but I am an American citizen, and I think it's the best possible combination. Joseph Brodsky

Best, I Am, Think, American, Literature

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

Education, Something, Everything, Well

What I like about cities is that everything is king size, the beauty and the ugliness. Joseph Brodsky

Beauty, King, Size, Everything, Like

The poetic notion of infinity is far greater than that which is sponsored by any creed. Joseph Brodsky

Infinity, Far, Than, Greater, Any, Which

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

Work, Life, Better, Fake, You, Hard

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