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" 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

Because

Hold

Language

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Joseph Brodsky

You

Reality

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

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

" Bad politics make for bad morals. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" It is well to read everything of something, and something of everything. "

" 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. "

" Who included me among the ranks of the human race? "

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

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

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

" Cherish your human connections: your relationships with friends and family. "

" 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. "

" 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. "