57 Quotes by Vladimir Mayakovsky

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.

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.

In the church of my heart the choir is on fire.

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.

To us love says humming that the heart’s stalled motor has begun working again.

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.

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.

No-one knows what huge suns will illuminate the life of the future. It may be that artists will transform the grey dust of the cities into hundred-coloured rainbows; that the never-ending thunderous music of volcanoes will be turned into the sound of flutes resounding from mountain ranges; that ocean waves will be forced to play on nets of chords...

A line is a fuse that’s lit. The line smolders, the rhyme explodes – and by a stanza a city is blown to bits.