# Vladimir Mayakovsky's best-known lines (with the poem)

"Listen! If stars are lit…", "I pull out of my wide trousers" and "Always to shine, to shine everywhere": the lines by Vladimir Mayakovsky every Russian knows, from his early Futurist poems to "At the Top of My Voice", with title and year.

- 6 votes · 16 items
- Jun 21, 2021 · Анастасия
- https://even.best/en/l/5174/vladimir-mayakovsky-s-best-known-lines-with-the-poem

## Top 16

1. **Listen! / If stars are lit, / it means someone needs it?** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Poem "Listen!", 1914.
2. **The street writhes, tongueless: / it has nothing to shout or speak with.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Long poem "A Cloud in Trousers", 1915.
3. **In this life / dying / is not hard. / Making life / is much harder.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Poem "To Sergei Yesenin", 1926.
4. **Listen, / comrades of posterity, / to an agitator, / a loudmouth ringleader.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Long poem "At the Top of My Voice", 1930.
5. **I am a poet. That is what makes me interesting.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Autobiography "I Myself", 1922.
6. **And could you / play a nocturne / on a drainpipe flute?** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Poem "But could you?", 1913.
7. **You came in, / sharp as a "here, take it!"** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Long poem "A Cloud in Trousers", 1915.
8. **Always to shine, / to shine everywhere, / to the very last of days, / to shine, and to hell with everything else! / That is my motto, / and the sun's!** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Poem "An Extraordinary Adventure Which Befell Vladimir Mayakovsky in a Summer Cottage", 1920.
9. **Quiet, orators! / Yours / is the floor, / Comrade Mauser.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Poem "Left March", 1918.
10. **Like a wolf / I would gnaw out / bureaucracy.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Poem "Verses on the Soviet Passport", 1929.
11. **A little son / came to his father / and the tiny one asked: / "What is good / and what is bad?"** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Poem "What Is Good and What Is Bad?", 1925.
12. **Poetry / is like mining radium. / A gram of output / for a year of work.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Poem "Conversation with a Tax Inspector about Poetry", 1926.
13. **I praise / the fatherland / that is, / but three times over / the one that will be.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Long poem "Good!", 1927.
14. **Even if I were an old Black man, / even then, / without gloom or laziness, / I would learn Russian / just because / Lenin spoke it.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Poem "To Our Youth", 1927.
15. **The love boat / has crashed against everyday life.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Unfinished poem, lines repeated in his suicide note, 1930.
16. **I pull out of my wide trousers / a duplicate / of priceless cargo. / Read it / and envy me: / I am / a citizen / of the Soviet Union.** (-1 · ▲0 ▼1) — Poem "Verses on the Soviet Passport", 1929.

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.