Osip Mandelstam quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Osip Mandelstam

Osip Mandelstam Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Osip Mandelstam on Wise Famous Quotes.

I am wearied to death with life.
There's nothing it has that I want,
but I celebrate my naked earth,
there's no other world to descant.

I was stopped in the dense Soviet wood by bandits who called themselves my judges.

The wolfhound century leaps at my shoulders,
But I am no wolf by blood.

For us, all that's left is kisses
tattered as the little bees
that die when they leave the hive.

Logic is the kingdom of the unexpected. To think logically means to be continually amazed.

I love my poor earth because I have seen no other.

Perhaps my whisper was already born before my lips.

I carry Sorrow, a grey
bird, sluggish, in my chest.

I envy everyone secretly,
I secretly love everything.

The earth is buzzing with metaphor

My turn shall also come: I sense the spreading of a wing.

The people need poetry that will be their own secret
To keep them awake forever,
And bathe them in the bright-haired wave of its breathing.

Poetry is the plough that turns up time in such a way that the abyssal strata of time, its black earth, appear on the surface.

Everything is moved by love.

The Armenian language cannot be worn out; its boots are stone. Well, certainly, the thick-walled words, the layers of air in the semi-vowels.

A raznochinets needs no memory - it is enough for him to tell of the books he has read, and his biography is done.

Where to start? Everything cracks and shakes, The air trembles with similes, No one world's better than another; the earth moans with metaphors.

Only in Russia poetry is respected
it gets people killed.

I want you now so awfully, No longer jealous-green, I bring myself as offering Up to the guillotine.