Joseph Brodsky was an American poet who was born in Leningrad, Russia. He was a Nobel Prize laureate and a professor at several universities in the United States. He was known for his lyric poetry and his essays on literature, culture, and exile. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Joseph Brodsky on love, life, universe.
Twentieth-century Russian literature has produced nothing special except perhaps one novel and two stories by Andrei Platonov, who ended his days sweeping streets.
There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
I sit in the dark. And it would be hard to figure out
which is worse; the dark inside, or the darkness out.
Geography blended with time equals destiny.
What I like about cities is that everything is king size, the beauty and the ugliness.
Cherish your human connections: your relationships with friends and family. Even your super weirdo creep cousin.
Perhaps the best proof of the Almighty's existence is that we never know when we are to die.
After having exhausted all the arguments on behalf of evil, one utters the creed's dictums with nostalgia rather than with fervor.
Joseph Brodsky inspirational quote
Joseph Brodsky Image Quotes
How delightful to find a friend in everyone. — Joseph Brodsky
There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them. — Joseph Brodsky
Joseph Brodsky Short Quotes
Racism? But isn't it only a form of misanthropy?
The poetic notion of infinity is far greater than that which is sponsored by any creed.
Bad literature is a form of treason.
A language is a more ancient and inevitable thing than any state.
For a writer only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.
Creativity is an unending exercise in uncertainty.
If one's fated to be born in Caesar's Empire, let him live aloof, provincial, by the seashore.
I got caught up in the proletariat the way Marx describes it.
The real history of consciousness starts with one's first lie.
The fact that we are living does not mean we are not sick.
Joseph Brodsky Quotes About Life
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
Life, the way it really is, is a battle not between Bad and Good but between Bad and Worse. — Joseph Brodsky
This is the generation whose first cry of life was the Hungarian uprising. — Joseph Brodsky
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
What should I say about life? That it's long and abhors transparence. — Joseph Brodsky
Every life has a file, if you will. — Joseph Brodsky
Life - the way it really is - is a battle not between Bad and Good but between Bad and Worse. — Joseph Brodsky
Poetry is rather an approach to things, to life, than it is typographical production. — Joseph Brodsky
Joseph Brodsky Quotes About Reading
Were we to choose our leaders on the basis of their reading experience and not their political programs, there would be much less grief on earth. I believe ... that for someone who has read a lot of Dickens to shoot his like in the name of an idea is harder than for someone who has read no Dickens. — Joseph Brodsky
Man is what he reads. — Joseph Brodsky
When I'm not writing or reading, I'm thinking about both. — Joseph Brodsky
Joseph Brodsky Quotes About Writing
Persecution mania is still around. In your writing, in your exchanges with people, meeting people who are in Russian affairs, Russian literature, etcetera. — Joseph Brodsky
Every writing career starts as a personal quest for sainthood, for self-betterment. Sooner or later, and as a rule quite soon, a man discovers that his pen accomplishes a lot more than his soul. — Joseph Brodsky
...in the business of writing what one accumulates is not expertise but uncertainties. Which is but another name for craft. — Joseph Brodsky
In sissy times, like these, one — Joseph Brodsky
I didn't want to be either the cre`me de la cre`me or a martyr. I'd rather be a novelty, especially in a democracy that doesn't understand the language I write in. — Joseph Brodsky
As to the state, from my point of view, the measure of a writer's patriotism is not oaths from a high platform, but how he writes in the language of the people among whom he lives . — Joseph Brodsky
I don't believe in that country any longer. I'm not interested. I'm writing in the language, and I like the language. — Joseph Brodsky
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. — Joseph Brodsky
Joseph Brodsky Famous Quotes And Sayings
How delightful to find a friend in everyone. — Joseph Brodsky
There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them. — Joseph Brodsky
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. — Joseph Brodsky
I had this fantasy of becoming a neurosurgeon. You know, the normal Jewish boy fantasy, but I wanted to be a neurosurgeon for some reason. So I started in this unpleasant way. I was an assistant to the coroner, opening up corpses, taking the innards out, opening skulls, taking the brains out. — Joseph Brodsky
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. — Joseph Brodsky
In the end, like the Almighty Himself, we make everything in our image, for want of a more reliable model; our artifacts tell more about ourselves than our confessions. — Joseph Brodsky
As long as the state permits itself to interfere in the affairs of literature, literature has the right to interfere with the affairs of state. — Joseph Brodsky
A man should know about himself two or three things: whether he is a coward; whether he is an honest man or given to lies; whether he is an ambitious man. One should define oneself first of all in those terms, and only then in terms of culture, race, creed. — Joseph Brodsky
If there is anything good about exile, it is that it teaches one humility. It accelerates one’s drift into isolation, an absolute perspective. Into the condition at which all one is left with is oneself and one’s language, with nobody or nothing in between. Exile brings you overnight where it would normally take a lifetime to go. — Joseph Brodsky
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. — Joseph Brodsky
In Russia, the moment a person opens his mouth you know where he's from. There's the uniformity of experience of an individual in Russia. When you're about 7 years old you get into school and you get put in this factory or this bureaucracy or whatever. The options are computable. Here it's tremendously diverse. — Joseph Brodsky
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. — Joseph Brodsky
Love itself is the most elitist of passions. It acquires its stereoscopic substance and perspective only in the context of culture, for it takes up more place in the mind than it does in bed. Outside of that setting it falls flat into one-dimensional fiction. — 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
The formula for prison is a lack of space counterbalanced by a surplus of time. This is what really bothers you, that you can't win. Prison is lack of alternatives, and the telescopic predictability of the future is what drives you crazy. — Joseph Brodsky
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
Because every book of art, be it a poem or a cupola, is understandably a self-portrait of its author, we won't strain ourselves too hard trying to distinguish between the author's persona and the poem's lyrical hero. As a rule, such distinctions are quite meaningless, if only because a lyrical hero is invariably an author's self-projection. — Joseph Brodsky
I grew up in the sort of cultural milieu that always regarded conversations about the political discourse as tremendously low-brow. — Joseph Brodsky
A poet is a combination of an instrument and a human being in one person, with the former gradually taking over the latter. The sensation of this takeover is responsible for timbre; the realization of it, for destiny. — Joseph Brodsky
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. — Joseph Brodsky
The Constitution doesn't mention rain. — Joseph Brodsky
Out of Dostoevsky: Kafka. Out of Tolstoy: Margaret Mitchell. (in conversation, explaining his dislike for Tolstoy) — Joseph Brodsky
No matter under what circumstances you leave it, home does not cease to be home. No matter how you lived there - well or poorly. — Joseph Brodsky
In poetic thought, the role of the subconscious is played by euphony. — Joseph Brodsky
Poetry is not only the most concise way of conveying the human experience; it also offers the highest possible standards for any linguistic operation. — Joseph Brodsky
In America, a metrical poem is likely to conjure up the idea of the sort of poet who wears ties and lunches at the faculty club. In Russia it suggests the moral force of an art practiced against the greatest personal odds, as a discipline, solitary and intense. — Joseph Brodsky
The moment that you place blame somewhere, you undermine your resolve to change anything. — Joseph Brodsky
Robert Frost's triumph was not being at John Kennedy's inauguration ceremony, but the day when he put the last period on "West-Running Brook. — Joseph Brodsky
What concerns me is that man, unable to articulate, to express himself adequately, reverts to action. Since the vocabulary of action is limited, as it were, to his body, he is bound to act violently, extending his vocabulary with a weapon where there should have been an adjective. — Joseph Brodsky
Who included me among the ranks of the human race? — Joseph Brodsky
What's happening in Russia is devoid of autobiographical interest for me. Maybe it's egocentric. Whatever it is, feel free to use it. — Joseph Brodsky
It's partly the fault of the institutions of education. But it's partly the decision to be relieved of responsibility. Literature is simply the most focused form of the demands on the evolution of the species. It imposes a certain responsibility, moral, ethical and esthetic responsibility, and the species simply doesn't want to oblige. — Joseph Brodsky
Russian talk of political evil is as natural as eating. — Joseph Brodsky
I'm 100 percent Jewish by blood, but by education I'm nothing. By affiliation I'm nothing. — Joseph Brodsky
My poems getting published in Russia doesn't make me feel in any fashion, to tell you the truth. I'm not trying to be coy, but it doesn't tickle my ego. — Joseph Brodsky
I don't want to dive into that mud slide, which is what I consider the literary process. — Joseph Brodsky
If I can get somewhere, I'm all right. If not, I'm miserable. — Joseph Brodsky
Poems, novels - these things belong to the nation, to the culture and the people. They've been stolen from the people and now the stolen things are being returned to their owners, but I don't think their owners should be grateful to receive them. — Joseph Brodsky
It's rather an exhilarating feeling. It's 6 or 7 when you get up and go out into the fields wearing your Wellingtons or high boots. You know that at this very hour half the nation does the same thing, which gives you, with the benefit of hindsight, a satisfaction in doing those things, too, a knowledge, a sense of the nation. I was a city boy until then. — Joseph Brodsky
I don't have principles. I have nerves. — Joseph Brodsky
In general, in America, every discourse in literature in 15 minutes degenerates into a conversation about ethics, morality and this and that. The Holocaust and the consequences of it. Well, I find it terribly boring, predictable and unimportant, because what matters about literature is esthetic achievement. — Joseph Brodsky
I'm a bad Jew, a bad Russian, a bad everything. — Joseph Brodsky
There's nothing as dear as the sight of ruins. — Joseph Brodsky
I'm not trying to be ridiculous or funny, but it was rather pleasant to find yourself in isolation, in solitary. — Joseph Brodsky
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. A majority by definition, society thinks of itself as having other options than reading verses, no matter how well written. Its failure to do so results in its sinking to that level of locution at which society falls easy prey to a demagogue or a tyrant. This is society's own equivalent of oblivion. — Joseph Brodsky
In the West you have every opportunity for civilization to triumph. — Joseph Brodsky
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. — Joseph Brodsky
For darkness restores what light cannot repair. — Joseph Brodsky
I am quite prepared to die here [in NY]. It doesn't matter at all. I don't know better places, or perhaps if I do I am not prepared to make a move. — Joseph Brodsky
The government, the state, they're just objects of jokes rather than serious consideration. I can't possibly take them seriously. — Joseph Brodsky
An object, after all, is what makes infinity private. — Joseph Brodsky
Literature sort of makes your daily operation, your daily conduct, the management of your affairs in the society a bit more complex. And it puts what you do in perspective, and people don't like to see themselves or their activities in perspective. They don't feel quite comfortable with that. Nobody wants to acknowledge the insignificance of his life, and that is very often the net result of reading a poem. — Joseph Brodsky
I'm neither Catholic not Protestant. Protestant sounds good but I don't think I am. — Joseph Brodsky
In general, with things unpleasant, the rule is: The sooner you hit bottom, the faster you surface. — Joseph Brodsky
When Thomas Mann arrived in California from Germany, they asked him about German literature. And he said, 'German literature is where I am.' It's really a bit grand, but if a German can afford it, I can afford it. — Joseph Brodsky
If they had wanted to punish me, they should have kept me in a communal apartment. Then I would have become a wreck. — Joseph Brodsky
I always adhered to the idea that God is time, or at least that His spirit is. — Joseph Brodsky
The eye identifies itself not with the body it belongs to but with the object of its attention. — Joseph Brodsky
Language and, presumably, literature are more ancient and inevitable, more durable than any form of social organization. The revulsion, irony, or indifference often expressed by literature toward the state is essentially the reaction of the permanent-better yet, the infinite-against the temporary, against the finite. — Joseph Brodsky
All the literati keep at least one imaginary friend. — Joseph Brodsky
In the works of the better poets you get the sensation that they're not talking to people any more, or to some seraphical creature. What they're doing is simply talking back to the language itself --as beauty, sensuality, wisdom, irony --those aspects of language of which the poet is a clear mirror. Poetry is not an art or a branch of art, it's something more. If what distinguishes us from other species is speech, then poetry, which is the supreme linguistic operation, is our anthropological, indeed genetic, goal. Anyone who regards poetry as an entertainment, as a read, commits an anthropological crime, in the first place, against himself. — Joseph Brodsky
I am losing my Soviet citizenship, I do not cease to be a Russian poet. I believe that I will return. Poets always return in flesh or on paper. — Joseph Brodsky
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
Perhaps art is simply an organism's reaction against its retentive limitations. — Joseph Brodsky
Poetry is what is gained in translation. — Joseph Brodsky
At certain periods of history it is only poetry that is capable of dealing with reality by condensing it into something graspable, something that otherwise wouldn't be retained by the mind. — Joseph Brodsky
Life Lessons by Joseph Brodsky
Joseph Brodsky taught us to embrace our own unique perspectives and to never be afraid to express ourselves honestly. He showed us that life is not always easy, but that we can find beauty and hope in the darkness.
He encouraged us to be open to learning from the world around us, to never stop growing and to strive for greatness.
Brodsky also reminded us to be kind to one another and to take the time to appreciate and savor the moments of joy in life.
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