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Joseph Brodsky Quotes
Joseph Brodsky Quotes
Joseph Brodsky
American
Poet
Born:
May 24
,
1940
Died:
Jan 28
,
1996
About
Language
Life
Poet
Time
You
Related authors:
Edgar Allan Poe
Emily Dickinson
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Maya Angelou
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Robert Frost
T. S. Eliot
Walt Whitman
An ethical man doesn't need a consensus of his allies in order to act against something he finds reprehensible.
Joseph Brodsky
Man
Finds
Something
Allies
He
His
Reprehensible
Order
Against
Ethical
Act
Consensus
Need
Man is what he reads.
Joseph Brodsky
Man
He
Reads
To put it in plain language, Russia is that country where the name of a writer appears not on the cover of his book, but on the door of his prison cell.
Joseph Brodsky
Book
Language
Country
Prison
Russia
Writer
Put
Name
Cover
His
Cell
Where
Door
Plain
Appears
Try not to pay attention to those who will try to make life miserable for you. There will be a lot of those - in the official capacity as well as the self-appointed.
Joseph Brodsky
Life
You
Try
Will
Miserable
Pay
Pay Attention
Those
Attention
Well
Make
Lot
Official
Capacity
Who
One of the worst things that can happen to an artist is to perceive himself as the owner of his art, and art as his tool. A product of the marketplace sensibility, this attitude barely differs on a psychological plane from the patron's view of the artist as a paid employee.
Joseph Brodsky
Attitude
Art
Tool
Marketplace
Worst
Perceive
Employee
Himself
His
Owner
Artist
Happen
Psychological
Sensibility
Patron
Plane
Barely
Product
View
Paid
Things
Differs
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
Political
Criticism
Invention
Past
Own
Our
Those
Though
Voice
Prophetic
Doctrines
Sciences
Proved
Times
Blossomed
Manageable
Same
Goes
Which
Social
Ethical
Product
Social Sciences
Appeared
Things
Good style in prose is always hostage to the precision, speed, and laconic intensity of poetic diction.
Joseph Brodsky
Good
Style
Speed
Poetic
Hostage
Prose
Always
Diction
Precision
Intensity
The real history of consciousness starts with one's first lie.
Joseph Brodsky
History
Lie
First
Starts
Real
Consciousness
For a head of state presiding over a ruined economy, an active army with its low wages is god-sent: All he's got to do is provide it with an objective.
Joseph Brodsky
Army
Active
State
Ruined
Objective
He
Head
Over
Economy
Got
Wages
Provide
Low
In order to live in a different country, you have to love something there. You have to love something there. You have to love either the spirit of the laws or the economic opportunities, or the - well, history of the country, the language perhaps, literature.
Joseph Brodsky
Love
History
You
Opportunities
Language
Country
Live
Spirit
Something
Laws
Economic
Economic Opportunities
Perhaps
Well
Different
Order
Either
Literature
To Love
The imprisoning of a writer is the same as the burning of a book.
Joseph Brodsky
Book
Writer
Same
Burning
Life - the way it really is - is a battle not between Bad and Good but between Bad and Worse.
Joseph Brodsky
Life
Good
Battle
Way
Worse
Bad
Between
Really
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
World
Language
Poet
Every
Ought
Guide
At Least One
Individual
Through
Know
Yardstick
Least
Cover
Then
Snobbery? But it's only a form of despair.
Joseph Brodsky
Snobbery
Despair
Only
Form
I started to write when I was eighteen or nineteen. However, until I was about twenty-three, I didn't take it that seriously.
Joseph Brodsky
Seriously
Nineteen
About
Write
Take
Until
However
Eighteen
Started
I always adhered to the idea that God is time, or at least that His spirit is.
Joseph Brodsky
God
Time
Spirit
Idea
Always
Least
His
The blue-collar is not supposed to read Horace, nor the farmer in his overalls Montale or Marvell. Nor, for that matter, is the politician expected to know by heart Gerard Manley Hopkins or Elizabeth Bishop. This is dumb as well as dangerous.
Joseph Brodsky
Heart
Dangerous
Matter
Politician
Bishop
Hopkins
Supposed
Overalls
Know
Well
Read
His
Nor
Dumb
Expected
Blue-Collar
Farmer
Elizabeth
On the whole, infinity is a fairly palpable aspect of this business of publishing, if only because it extends a dead author's existence beyond the limits he envisioned, or provides a living author with a future he cannot measure. In other words, this business deals with the future which we all prefer to regard as unending.
Joseph Brodsky
Future
Business
Words
Living
Other
Only
He
Beyond
Envisioned
Dead
Fairly
Because
Deals
Limits
Existence
Provides
Author
Unending
Infinity
In Other Words
Regard
Cannot
Which
Prefer
Aspect
Measure
Whole
Publishing
Palpable
Once I stop being a citizen of the U.S.S.R., I will not stop being a Russian poet.
Joseph Brodsky
Will
Citizen
Poet
Once
Russian
Stop
Being
This is the generation whose first cry of life was the Hungarian uprising.
Joseph Brodsky
Life
Generation
First
Hungarian
Cry
Uprising
Whose
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.
Joseph Brodsky
Me
You
Judge
Country
Enough
System
Would
Would-Be
Leave
Versus
Soviet
Soviet Union
Jury
Cannot
Prefer
Union
Twelve
Basis
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.
Joseph Brodsky
Journey
Poet
On The Contrary
Point
Doctrine
Metaphysical
Arrival
Contrary
Departure
I don't suppose that I know more about life than anyone of my age, but it seems to me that, in the capacity of an interlocutor, a book is more reliable than a friend or a beloved.
Joseph Brodsky
Life
Me
Age
Book
Reliable
About
Seems
More
Suppose
Know
Friend
Than
Anyone
Capacity
Beloved
For some odd reason, the expression 'death of a poet' always sounds somewhat more concrete than 'life of a poet.'
Joseph Brodsky
Life
Death
Poet
Some
More
Somewhat
Always
Concrete
Sounds
Odd
Than
Reason
Expression
After the last line of a poem, nothing follows except literary criticism.
Joseph Brodsky
Criticism
Nothing
Follows
Poem
Except
Line
Literary
After
Literary Criticism
Last
It is almost a rule that the more complex a man is, the simpler his billing. A person with a retrospective ability gone rampant often would be called an historian. Similarly, one to whom reality doesn't seem to make sense gets dubbed a philosopher.
Joseph Brodsky
Man
Reality
Sense
Gone
Philosopher
Rampant
Rule
Complex
Would
Would-Be
Ability
Seem
Similarly
More
Simpler
Almost
Make
Retrospective
His
Historian
Person
Gets
Often
Billing
Whom
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