Vladimir Mayakovsky Quotes

31 Sourced Quotes

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
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 Mayakovsky
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 Mayakovsky
In our language rhyme is a barrel. A barrel of dynamite. The line is a fuse. The line smoulders to the end and explodes; and the town is blown sky-high in a stanza.

Vladimir Mayakovsky
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 Mayakovsky
Or if you prefer
as the sky changes tone
I'll be absolutely tender
not a man but a cloud in trousers.

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 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
The ship of love has foundered on life's reef. You and I are even. And why should we list our mutual grievances, our hurts, our griefs? See how the world has grown.

Vladimir Mayakovsky
On the pavement
of my trampled soul
the steps of madmen
weave the prints of rude crude words.

Vladimir Mayakovsky
But I,
from poetry's skies,
plunge into communism,
because
without it
I feel no love.

Vladimir Mayakovsky
No gray hair in my soul
no doddering tenderness,
I rock the world with the thunder of my voice,
strolling, looking good –
twenty-two.

Vladimir Mayakovsky
The bull of the days is skewballed.
The cart of the years is slow.
Our god is speed. The heart is our drum.

Vladimir Mayakovsky
Love
for us
is no paradise of arbors —
to us
love tells us, humming,
that the stalled motor
of the heart
has started to work
again.

Vladimir Mayakovsky
In parade deploying
the armies of my pages,
I shall inspect
the regiments in line.
Heavy as lead,
my verses at attention stand,
ready for death
and for immortal fame.

Vladimir Mayakovsky
Not a sound. The universe sleeps, resting a huge ear on its paw with mites of stars.

Vladimir Mayakovsky
A rhyme's
…
a barrel of dynamite.
A line is a fuse
that's lit.
The line smoulders,
the rhyme explodes –
and by a stanza
a city
is blown to bits.

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 Mayakovsky
If you wish,
I shall grow irreproachably tender:
not a man, but a cloud in trousers!

Vladimir Mayakovsky
No gray hairs streak my soul,
no grandfatherly fondness there!
I shake the world with the might of my voice,
and walk – handsome,
twentytwoyearold.

Vladimir Mayakovsky
Oh for just
one
more conference
regarding the eradication of all conferences!

Vladimir Mayakovsky
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 Mayakovsky
Citizen!
Consider my traveling expenses:
Poetry— all of it —
is a journey to the unknown.

Vladimir Mayakovsky
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
Then there's amortization, the deadliest of all, Amortization of the heart and soul.

Vladimir Mayakovsky
Tramp squares with rebellious treading!
Up heads! As proud peaks be seen!
In the second flood we are spreading
Every city on earth will be clean.

Vladimir Mayakovsky
My verse
has brought me
no roubles to spare:
no craftsmen have made
mahogany chairs for my house.

Vladimir Mayakovsky
Hey, you!
Heaven!
Off with your hat!
I am coming!

Not a sound.

The universe sleeps,
its huge paw curled
upon a star-infested ear.

Vladimir Mayakovsky
Comrade life,
let us
march faster,
March
faster through what's left
of the five-year plan.

Vladimir Mayakovsky
Agitprop
sticks
in my teeth too,
and I'd rather
compose
romances for you –
more profit in it
and more charm.
But I
subdued
myself,
setting my heel
on the throat
of my own song.

Vladimir Mayakovsky