Joseph Brodsky Quotes

My life day in and day out is accessing my emotions and bringing them to the forefront.

I try not to look at stories on the Internet because I don't want to psych myself out. I kinda half to stay off the Internet. I'm not thick-skinned enough. I get too sensitive. I don't want it to effect what I'm doing.

Boredom is like a pitiless zooming in on the epidermis of time. Every instant is dilated and magnified like the pores of the face.

The hours of a wise man are lengthened by his ideas, as those of a fool are by his passions. The time of the one is long, because he does not know what to do with it; so is that of the other, because he distinguishes every moment of it with useful or amusing thoughts--or, in other words, because the one is always wishing it away, and the other always enjoying it.

Our occasional madness is less wonderful than our occasional sanity.

I'm not suffering from withdrawal symptoms. I would say that I have a balanced state of mind.

We bore ourselves in order to earn money that we'll later spend on trying to de-bore ourselves

The test in life nowadays is just trying to keep yourself charged up with enough good feeling. It's like, "OK what am I going to do to feel really good today?" Not like, some chick or a drink.

Too much sanity may be madness!

It seemed like forever ago, like we've had this brief but still infinite forever. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.

I realized then that a man who had lived only one day could easily live for a hundred years in prison. He would have enough memories to keep him from being bored

Why did I allow myself to be bored ever in the past and to compensate for it got high or drunk or rages or all the tricks people have because they want anything but serene understanding of just what there is, which is after all so much.

Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person's capacity to act.

Calculate what man knows and it cannot compare to what he doesn't know. Calculate the time he is alive and it cannot compare to the time before he was born. Yet man takes something so small and tries to exhaust the dimensions of something so large!

An unhealthy mind, even in a healthy body, will ultimately destroy health.

If you're alone with nothing to do, the quality of your experience really plummets.

Every day when I wake I tell myself that it will be my last. If you are not trying to hold on to time, you are not so afraid of losing it... And then, if you make it to bedtime, you feel the joy of cheating death out of one more day.

I always try to practice what I preach. I meditate for fifteen minutes every day and do yoga several times a week.

A split second is nothing compared to twenty-four hours. On God's clock you're in the middle of your millisecond. Compared to eternity, what is seventy, eighty, ninety years?

The hours here are flat and round, disks of gray layered one on top of the other...they move slowly, at a grind, until it seems as though they are not moving at all. They are just pressing down.

Every thought creates form on some level and all that our physical experience is - is a reflection of our thoughts.

You can be smart and happy or stupid and miserable. . . it's your choice

The soul is subject to health and disease, just as is the body. The health and disease of both . . . undoubtedly depend upon beliefs and customs, which are peculiar to mankind.

If you are distressed by something, it is due to your own estimate of it; and you have the power to change it at will.

The tendency is to blame boredom on the environment. "This town is really dull" or "What a boring speaker." The particular town or speaker is never dull, it is you experiencing the boredom, and you can eliminate it by doing something else with your mind or energy at that moment.