Alexander Pushkin > Quotes

“I want to understand you,
I study your obscure language.”
― Alexander Pushkin

“I have outlasted all desire,
My dreams and I have grown apart;
My grief alone is left entire,
The gleamings of an empty heart.

The storms of ruthless dispensation
Have struck my flowery garland numb,
I live in lonely desolation
And wonder when my end will come.

Thus on a naked tree-limb, blasted
By tardy winter's whistling chill,
A single leaf which has outlasted
Its season will be trembling still.”
― Alexander Pushkin

“I loved you: and, it may be, from my soul
The former love has never gone away,
But let it not recall to you my dole;
I wish not sadden you in any way.

I loved you silently, without hope, fully,
In diffidence, in jealousy, in pain;
I loved you so tenderly and truly,
As let you else be loved by any man. ”
― Alexander Pushkin

“My whole life has been pledged to this meeting with you...”
― Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin

“A deception that elevates us is dearer than a host of low truths.”
― Aleksander Pushkin

“If you but knew the flames that burn in me which I attempt to beat down with my reason.”
― Alexander Pushkin

“I've lived to bury my desires
and see my dreams corrode with rust
now all that's left are fruitless fires
that burn my empty heart to dust.

Struck by the clouds of cruel fate
My crown of Summer bloom is sere
Alone and sad, I watch and wait
And wonder if the end is near.

As conquered by the last cold air
When Winter whistles in the wind
Alone upon a branch that's bare
A trembling leaf is left behind.”
― Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

“My dreams, my dreams! What has become of their sweetness? What indeed has become of my youth?”
― Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin

“I’ve lived to bury my desires,
And see my dreams corrode with rust;
Now all that’s left are fruitless fires
That burn my empty heart to dust.”
― Aleksandr Puskin

“Moral maxims are surprisingly useful on occasions when we can invent little else to justify our actions.”
― Alexander Pushkin, Tales of Belkin

“The wondrous moment of our meeting...
Still I remember you appear
Before me like a vision fleeting,
A beauty's angel pure and clear.

In hopeless ennui surrounding
The worldly bustle, to my ear
For long your tender voice kept sounding,
For long in dreams came features dear.

Time passed. Unruly storms confounded
Old dreams, and I from year to year
Forgot how tender you had sounded,
Your heavenly features once so dear.

My backwoods days dragged slow and quiet --
Dull fence around, dark vault above --
Devoid of God and uninspired,
Devoid of tears, of fire, of love.

Sleep from my soul began retreating,
And here you once again appear
Before me like a vision fleeting,
A beauty's angel pure and clear.

In ecstasy my heart is beating,
Old joys for it anew revive;
Inspired and God-filled, it is greeting
The fire, and tears, and love alive.”
― Alexander Pushkin

“It's a lucky man, a very lucky man, who is committed to what he believes, who has stifled intellectual detachment and can relax in the luxury of his emotions - like a tipsy traveller resting for the night at wayside inn.”
― Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin

“He filled a shelf with a small army of books and read and read; but none of it made sense. .. They were all subject to various cramping limitations: those of the past were outdated, and those of the present were obsessed with the past.”
― Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin

“..depression still kept guard on him, and chased after him like a shadow - or like a faithful wife.”
― Alexander Pushkin , Eugene Onegin

“I was not born to amuse the Tsars.”
― Alexander Pushkin

“But whom to love?
To trust and treasure?
Who won’t betray us in the end?
And who’ll be kind enough to measure
Our words and deeds as we intend?”
― Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin

“Dearer to me than a host of base truths is the illusion that exalts.”
― Alexander Pushkin

“People are so like their first mother Eve: what they are given doesn't take their fancy. The serpent is forever enticing them to come to him, to the tree of mystery. They must have the forbidden fruit, or paradise will not be paradise for them.”
― Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin

“Thus people--so it seems to me--
Become good friends from sheer ennui.”
― Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin

“Bound for your distant home"

Bound for your distant home
you were leaving alien lands.
In an hour as sad as I’ve known
I wept over your hands.
My hands were numb and cold,
still trying to restrain
you, whom my hurt told
never to end this pain.

But you snatched your lips away
from our bitterest kiss.
You invoked another place
than the dismal exile of this.
You said, ‘When we meet again,
in the shadow of olive-trees,
we shall kiss, in a love without pain,
under cloudless infinities.’

But there, alas, where the sky
shines with blue radiance,
where olive-tree shadows lie
on the waters glittering dance,
your beauty, your suffering,
are lost in eternity.
But the sweet kiss of our meeting ......
I wait for it: you owe it me .......”
― Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin

“But even friendship like our heroes'
Exist no more; for we've outgrown
All sentiments and deem men zeroes--
Except of course ourselves alone.
We all take on Napoleon's features,
And millions of our fellow creatures
Are nothing more to us than tools...
Since feelings are for freaks and fools.
Eugene, of course, had keen perceptions
And on the whole despised mankind,
Yet wasn't, like so many, blind;
And since each rule permits exceptions,
He did respect a noble few,
And, cold himself, gave warmth its due.”
― Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin

“اذا وقعت مذكراتي هذه بين يدي شاب فليتذكر أن أحسن التغييرات وأبقاها هي التي ترجع الى تحسن  الأخلاق والعادات لا الى هزة عنيفة أو ثورة جامحة.”
― Alexander Pushkin, The Captain's Daughter

“Ecstasy is a glass full of tea and a piece of sugar in the mouth."

[From: 19 Lessons On Tea]”
― Alexander Pushkin

“The less we love her when we woo her,
The more we draw a woman in,”
― Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin

“Better the illusions that exalt us than ten thousand truths.”
― Aleksander Pushkin

“Two fixed ideas can no more exist together in the moral world than two bodies can occupy one and the same place in the physical world.”
― Alexander Pushkin, The Queen of Spades

“Play interests me very much," said Hermann: "but I am not in the position to sacrifice the necessary in the hope of winning the superfluous.”
― Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

“It's a lucky man who leaves early from life's banquet, before he's drained to the dregs his goblet - full of wine; yes, it's a lucky man who has not read life's novel to the end, but has been wise enough to part with it abruptly - like me with my Onegin.”
― Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin

“But flaming youth in all it's madness
Keeps nothing of its heart concealed:
It's loves and hates, its joys and sadness,
Are babbled out and soon revealed.”
― Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin

“Онегин, я тогда моложе,
Я лучше, кажется, была,
И я любила вас; и что же?
Что в сердце вашем я нашла?
Какой ответ? одну суровость.
Не правда ль? Вам была не новость
Смиренной девочки любовь?
И нынче — боже — стынет кровь,
Как только вспомню взгляд холодный
И эту проповедь… Но вас
Я не виню: в тот страшный час
Вы поступили благородно.
Вы были правы предо мной:
Я благодарна всей душой…”
― Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin