Vladimir Mayakovsky quotes
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“Art must not be concentrated in dead shrines called museums. lt must be spread everywhere – on the streets, in the trams, factories, workshops, and in the workers' homes.”
-- Vladimir MayakovskySource : "Shrine or Factory?" by Vladimir Mayakovsky, 1918.
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“Our planet is poorly equipped for delight. One must snatch gladness from the days that are. In this life it's not difficult to die. To make life is more difficult by far.”
-- Vladimir MayakovskySource : Vladimir Mayakovsky (1965). “Mayakovsky”
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“Comrade life, let us march faster, March faster through what's left of the five-year plan.”
-- Vladimir MayakovskySource : Vladimir Mayakovsky (1975). “Klop, Stikhi, Poėmy”, p.233, Indiana University Press
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“Too slow, the wagons of years, The oxen of days--too glum. Our god is the god of speed, Our heart--our battle-drum.”
-- Vladimir MayakovskySource : Vladimir Mayakovsky (1972). “Poems”
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“My verse has brought me no roubles to spare: no craftsmen have made mahogany chairs for my house.”
-- Vladimir Mayakovsky -
“In the church of my heart the choir is on fire”
-- Vladimir MayakovskySource : Vladimir Mayakovsky (1965). “Mayakovsky”
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“If an American is motoring on his own, he (the paragon of morality and chastity) will slow down and stop beside every solitary pretty female pedestrian, bare his teeth in a big smile, and tempt her into his car with a wild roll of the eyes. A lady who fails to appreciate his passion will qualify as an idiot who doesn't realise how lucky she is to have the opportunity of getting to know the owner of this 100-horse-power motor car.”
-- Vladimir MayakovskySource : Vladimir Mayakovsky (2005). “My Discovery of America”
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“To us love says humming that the heart's stalled motor has begun working again.”
-- Vladimir MayakovskySource : 1928 'Letter fromParis to Comrade Kostorov on the Nature of Love' (translated by Samuel Charteris).
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“I want to be understood by my country, but if I fail to be understood - what then?, I shall pass through my native land to one side, like a shower of slanting rain.”
-- Vladimir MayakovskySource : Vladimir Mayakovsky (1975). “Klop, Stikhi, Poėmy”, p.311, Indiana University Press
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“Love's ship has foundered on the rocks of life. We're quits: stupid to draw up a list of mutual sorrows, hurts and pains.”
-- Vladimir Mayakovsky -
“I understand the power and the alarm of words - Not those that they applaud from theatre-boxes, but those which make coffins break from bearers and on their four oak legs walk right away.”
-- Vladimir Mayakovsky -
“If you wish, I shall grow irreproachably tender: not a man, but a cloud in trousers!”
-- Vladimir MayakovskySource : "The Cloud in Trousers" (1915) (translation by George Reavey)
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“The love boat has crashed against the everyday.”
-- Vladimir Mayakovsky -
“Were I as quiet as thunder, how I'd wail and whine! One groan of mine would start the world's crumbling cloister shivering. And if I'd end up by roaring with all of its power of lungs and more - the comets, distressed, would wring their hands and from the sky's roof leap in a fever.”
-- Vladimir MayakovskySource : Vladimir Mayakovsky (1985). “Селестед Воркс ин Тхрее Волумес: Селестед версе”
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“Past one o’clock. You must have gone to bed. The Milky Way streams silver through the night. I’m in no hurry; with lightning telegrams I have no cause to wake or trouble you. And, as they say, the incident is closed. Love’s boat has smashed against the daily grind. Now you and I are quits. Why bother then To balance mutual sorrows, pains, and hurts. Behold what quiet settles on the world. Night wraps the sky in tribute from the stars. In hours like these, one rises to address The ages, history, and all creation.”
-- Vladimir Mayakovsky -
“Listen! If stars are lit It means there is someone who needs it, It means someone wants them to be, That someone deems those specks of spit Magnificent!”
-- Vladimir MayakovskySource : Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky, “Listen!”
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“If you like I'll be furious flesh elemental, or- changing to tones that the sunset arouses- if you like- I'll be extraordinary gentle, not a man but - a cloud in trousers.”
-- Vladimir MayakovskySource : Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky, “A Cloud In Trousers - Epilogue”
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“Formerly I believed books were made like this: a poet came, lightly opened his lips, and the inspired fool burst into song – if you please! But it seems, before they can launch a song, poets must tramp for days with callused feet, and the sluggish fish of the imagination flounders softly in the slush of the heart. And while, with twittering rhymes, they boil a broth of loves and nightingales, the tongueless street merely writhes for lack of something to shout or say”
-- Vladimir MayakovskySource : Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky, “A Cloud In Trousers - Part II”
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“A line is a fuse that's lit. The line smolders, the rhyme explodes— and by a stanza a city is blown to bits.”
-- Vladimir Mayakovsky -
“There’s no grandfatherly fondness in me, There are no gray hairs in my soul! Shaking the world with my voice and grinning, I pass you by, - handsome, Twentytwoyearold.”
-- Vladimir Mayakovsky -
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“Gentle souls! You play your love on the violin. The crude ones play it on the drums violently. But can you turn yourselves inside out, like me And become just two lips entirely?”
-- Vladimir Mayakovsky -
“On I’ll pass, dragging my huge love behind me. On what feverish night, deliria-ridden, by what Goliaths was I begot – I, so big and by no one needed?”
-- Vladimir Mayakovsky -
“On the pavement of my trampled soul the steps of madmen weave the prints of rude crude words.”
-- Vladimir MayakovskySource : Vladimir Mayakovsky (1975). “Klop, Stikhi, Poėmy”, p.53, Indiana University Press
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“But I, from poetry's skies, plunge into communism, because without it I feel no love.”
-- Vladimir MayakovskySource : Vladimir Mayakovsky (1975). “Klop, Stikhi, Poėmy”, p.36, Indiana University Press
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“They stood brow to brow, brown to white, black to black, he supporting her elbows, she playing her limp light fingers over his collarbone, and how he "ladored,"he said, the dark aroma of her hair blending with crushed lily stalks, Turkish cigarettes and the lassitude that comes from "lass." "No, no, don't," she said, I must wash, quick-quick, Ada must wash; but for yet another immortal moment they stood embraced in the hushed avenue, enjoying as they had never enjoyed before, the "happy-forever" feeling at the end of never-ending fairy tales.”
-- Vladimir Mayakovsky
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