Joseph Brodsky Quotes

American - Poet May 24, 1940 - January 28, 1996

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

Funny, Ranks, Race

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

Saint Patrick's Day, Your

Venice is eternity itself. Joseph Brodsky

Eternity, Venice, Itself

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

Bad, Thought, Idea

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

Form, Only, Snobbery

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

Which, Poetic, Notion

Life has a great deal up its sleeve. Joseph Brodsky

Deal, Sleeve, Great Deal

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

Always, Big, Ideological

Man is what he reads. - Joseph Brodsky

Man is what he reads. Joseph Brodsky

Education, Reads, Man

When you have those two languages - an analytic one like English and a synthetic, very sensual thing like Russian, you get almost a psychotic sense of humanity that permeates nearly everything. It can help you understand, and it can discourage you, because you see how little can be done. Joseph Brodsky

Very, Almost, Nearly

Top 10
Joseph Brodsky
Quotes

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, Equally, Bound

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

Teach, Boredom, Utter

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

Very, I Remember, Still

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

Play, Small, Game

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

Need, Against, Ethical

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

Rewarding, Like, Inevitably

The invention of ethical and political doctrines, which blossomed into our own social sciences, is a product of times when things appeared manageable. The same goes for the criticism of those doctrines, though as a voice from the past, this criticism proved prophetic. Joseph Brodsky

Voice, Own, Political

To put it mildly, nothing can be turned and worn inside out with greater ease than one's notion of social justice, public conscience, a better future, etc. Joseph Brodsky

Ease, Better Future, Worn

It's not that prison makes you shed your abstract notions. On the contrary, it pares them down to their most succinct articulations. Prison is, indeed, a translation of your metaphysics, ethics, sense of history and whatnot into the compact terms of your daily deportment. Joseph Brodsky

Shed, Compact, Whatnot

This assumption that the blue collar crowd is not supposed to read it, or a farmer in his overalls is not to read poetry, seems to be dangerous if not tragic. Joseph Brodsky

Collar, Read, Crowd

Bad politics make for bad morals. Joseph Brodsky

Bad, Politics, Morals

The unbearableness of the future is easier to face than that of the present if only because human foresight is much more destructive than anything that the future can bring about. Joseph Brodsky

More, Bring, About

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

Remember, Some, Loss

Time is water, and the Venetians conquered both by building a city on water, and framed time with their canals. Or tamed time. Or fenced it in. Or caged it. Joseph Brodsky

City, Conquered, Caged

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

Cities, Size, Beauty

What makes art in general, and literature in particular, remarkable, what distinguishes them from life, is precisely that they abhor repetition. In everyday life, you can tell the same joke thrice and, thrice getting a laugh, become the life of the party. In art, though, this sort of conduct is called 'cliche.' Joseph Brodsky

Tell, Repetition, Life

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