A Quote by Joseph Brodsky

A writer is seldom satisfied with the condition he finds himself in. We're all given to fretting a lot.

Joseph Brodsky

Quote Topics

Condition Finds Fretting Given Himself Lot Satisfied Seldom Writer

Quote Author

Joseph Brodsky
American - Poet
May 24, 1940 - January 28, 1996

A man seldom finds people unthankful, as long as he remains in a condition of benefiting them further.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.

Marcel Proust

Proof that a given condition always precedes or accompanies a phenomenon does not warrant concluding with certainty that a given condition is the immediate cause of that phenomenon. It must still be established that when this condition is removed, the phenomen will no longer appear.

Claude Bernard

All sorts of Heroes are intrinsically of the same material; that given a great soul, open to the Divine Significance of Life, then there is given a man fit to speak of this, to sing of this, to fight and work for this, in a great, victorious, enduring manner; there is given a Hero, -- the outward shape of whom will depend on the time and the environment he finds himself in.

Thomas Carlyle

Such is the state of every age, every sex, and every condition: all have their cares, either from nature or from folly; and whoever, therefore, finds himself inclined to envy another, should remember that he knows not the real condition which he desires to obtain, but is certain that by indulging a vicious passion, he must lessen that happiness which he thinks already too sparingly bestowed.

Samuel Johnson

One of the best descriptions of the type of writer I am was given by Tom Paulin, who described himself as a 'binge' writer - like a binge drinker. I go on binges.

Seamus Heaney

Our happiest times are those in which we forget ourselves, usually in being kind to someone else. That tiny moment of self-abdication is an act of true humility: the man who loses himself finds himself and finds his happiness.

Fulton J. Sheen

A person well satisfied with themselves is seldom satisfied with others, and others, rarely are with them.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

The human race may be compared to a writer. At the outset a writer has often only a vague general notion of the plan of his work, and of the thought he intends to elaborate. As he proceeds, penetrating his material, laboring to express himself fitly, he lays a firmer grasp on his thought; he finds himself. So the human race is writing its story, finding itself, discovering its own underlying purpose, revising, recasting a tale pathetic often, yet none the less sublime.

Felix Adler

Like the weaver, the writer works on the wrong side of his material. He has only to do with the language, and it is thus that he suddenly finds himself surrounded by sense.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

A man finds love and is satisfied. A woman finds love and insists on turning it into happiness.

Robert Breault

The great writer finds style as the mystic finds God, in his own soul.

Havelock Ellis

Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully be wiser today than he was yesterday - that he may rightfully change when he finds himself wrong. But can we, for that reason, run ahead, and infer that he will make any particular change, of which he, himself, has given no intimation?

Abraham Lincoln

Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing.