Osip Mandelstam Quotes

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.

Perhaps the whisper was born before lips, And the leaves in treelessness circled and flew, And those, to whom we impart our experience as bliss, Acquire their forms before we do

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

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.

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.

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

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

Perhaps my whisper was already born before my lips.

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

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

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

Only in Russia poetry is respected--it gets people killed.

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

The earth is buzzing with metaphor

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