Vladimir Mayakovsky

“Art is not a mirror to reflect the world, but a hammer with which to shape it.”

“Love's boat has smashed against the daily grind.”

“I want to be understood by my country, but if I am not understood, what then? I shall pass through my native land to one side, like a shower of slanting rain.”

“In this life, it's not difficult to die. To make life is more difficult by far.”

“I am not a man, but a cloud in trousers.”

“It is better to die from vodka than from boredom.”

“Eat your pineapples, munch your grouse. Your last day is coming, you bourgeois louse!”

“My verse will reach you across the peaks of eras and over the heads of poets and governments.”

“Shine forever, shine everywhere, shine to the very last days, shine—and to hell with everything else! That is my motto—and the sun's!”

“There are no gray hairs in my soul!”

“One must snatch the joy from the fleeting days.”

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

“A poet is always in debt to the universe.”

“The past is not a package one can lay away.”

“To you, who are sweating in the factory, and you who are bent over the plough, we dedicate our verses.”