Joseph Brodsky Quotes About Language

Quotes about: Language

• For a writer only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Attitude, Patriotism, Language

• ...boredom speaks the language of time, and it is to teach you the most valuable lesson in your life--...the lesson of your utter insignificance. It is valuable to you, as well as to those you are to rub shoulders with. 'You are finite,' time tells you in a voice of boredom, 'and whatever you do is, from my point of view, futile.' As music to your ears, this, of course, may not count; yet the sense of futility, of limited significance even of your best, most ardent actions is better than the illusion of their consequence and the attendant self-satisfaction.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Voice, Self, Views

• 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 Lesson, Blessing, Boredom

• 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, Yardsticks, Language

• 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

  Writing, Views, People

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• 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

  Country, Believe, Writing

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• 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

  Writing, Democracy, Want

  "Joseph Brodsky's Art of Darkness". www.washingtonpost.com. October 23, 1987.

• 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

  Humility, Perspective, Language

• A language is a more ancient and inevitable thing than any state.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Language, Ancient, States

• 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

  Organization, Literature, Irony

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