Alexander Pushkin Quotes

43 Sourced Quotes

God grant you, friends, a helping hand—
In cares of state and private plights,
In rowdy feasts of friendship's band,
In passion's sweet and secret rites!
God grant you, friends, a helping hand—
In daily woes and days of strife,
On vacant sa, in distant land,
In every black abyss of life!

Alexander Pushkin
A tedious season they await
Who hear November at the gate.

Alexander Pushkin
A man who's active and incisive
can yet keep nail-care much in mind:
why fight what's known to be decisive?
custom is despot of mankind.

Alexander Pushkin
Habit is Heaven's own redress:
it takes the place of happiness.

Alexander Pushkin
Always contented with his life,
and with his dinner, and his wife.

Alexander Pushkin
"I have come to you against my wish," she said in a firm voice: "but I have been ordered to grant your request. Three, seven, ace, will win for you if played in succession, but only on these conditions: that you do not play more than one card in twenty-four hours, and that you never play again during the rest of your life. I forgive you my death, on condition that you marry my companion, Lizaveta Ivanovna."

Alexander Pushkin
Moscow... how many strains are fusing
in that one sound, for Russian hearts!
what store of riches it imparts!

Alexander Pushkin
The illness with which he'd been smitten
should have been analysed when caught,
something like spleen, that scourge of Britain,
or Russia's chondria, for short.

Alexander Pushkin
God save us from seeing a Russian revolt, senseless and merciless. Those who plot impossible upheavals among us, are either young and do not know our people, or are hard-hearted men who do not care a straw either about their own lives or those of others.

Alexander Pushkin
"The bread of the stranger is bitter," says Dante, "and his staircase hard to climb." But who can know what the bitterness of dependence is so well as the poor companion of an old lady of quality?

Alexander Pushkin
There yet remains but one concluding tale,
And then this chronicle of mine is ended—
Fulfilled, the duty God ordained to me,
A sinner. Not without purpose did the Lord
Put me to witness much for many years
And educate me in the love of books.
One day some indefatigable monk
Will find my conscientious, unsigned work;
Like me, he will light up his ikon-lamp
And, shaking from the scroll the age-old dust,
He will transcribe these tales in all their truth.

Alexander Pushkin
The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths.

Alexander Pushkin
The less we show our love to a woman,
Or please her less, and neglect our duty,
The more we trap and ruin her surely
In the flattering toils of philandery.

Alexander Pushkin
And thus He mused: "From here, indeed
Shall we strike terror in the Swede?
And here a city by our labor
Founded, shall gall our haughty neighbor;
"Here cut" - so Nature gives command -
Your window through on Europe; stand
Firm-footed by the sea, unchanging!

Alexander Pushkin
When the loud day for men who sow and reap
Grows still, and on the silence of the town
The insubstantial veils of night and sleep,
The meed of the day's labour, settle down,
Then for me in the stillness of the night
The wasting, watchful hours drag on their course,
And in the idle darkness comes the bite
Of all the burning serpents of remorse;
Dreams seethe; and fretful infelicities
Are swarming in my over-burdened soul,
And Memory before my wakeful eyes
With noiseless hand unwinds her lengthy scroll.
Then, as with loathing I peruse the years,
I tremble, and I curse my natal day,
Wail bitterly, and bitterly shed tears,
But cannot wash the woeful script away.

Alexander Pushkin
'Tis time, my friend, 'tis time!
For rest the heart is aching;
Days follow days in flight, and every day is taking
Fragments of being, while together you and I
Make plans to live. Look, all is dust, and we shall die.

Alexander Pushkin
To love all ages yield surrender; But to the young it's raptures bring A blessing bountiful and tender- As storms refresh the fields of spring.

Alexander Pushkin
Disrespect for one's ancestors is the first sign of barbarity and immorality.

Alexander Pushkin
Nothing inflames love so much as the encouraging observation of a bystander: love is blind, and having no trust in itself, readily grasps hold of every support.

Alexander Pushkin
To me; here, my Madonna, thou shalt throne:
Most pure exemplar of the purest grace.

Alexander Pushkin
When, wrapped in storm, shall I be battling
The billows, while the shrouds are rattling,
And roam the sea's expanse unpent,
Quit of the shore's dull element?
'Tis time to seek the southern surges
Beneath my Afric's sunny sky,
And, there at home, for Russia sigh,
Lamenting in new songs and dirges
The land that knew my love, my pain,
Where long my buried heart is lain.

Alexander Pushkin
Nothing is hidden from the eyes of the observing world.

Alexander Pushkin
Upon the brink of the wild stream
He stood, and dreamt a mighty dream.

Alexander Pushkin
Please, never despise the translator. He's the mailman of human civilization.

Alexander Pushkin
When trade and traffic and all the noise of town
Is dimmed, and on the streets and squares
The filmy curtain of the night sinks down
With sleep, the recompense of cares,
To me the darkness brings not sleep nor rest.

Alexander Pushkin
A woman's love for us increases
The less we love her, sooth to say—
She stoops, she falls, her struggling ceases;
Caught fast, she cannot get away.

Alexander Pushkin
A green oak grows by a curving shore;
And round that oak hangs a golden chain.

Alexander Pushkin
"Ace has won!" cried Hermann, showing his card.
"Your queen has lost," said Chekalinsky, politely.
Hermann started; instead of an ace, there lay before him the queen of spades! He could not believe his eyes, nor could he understand how he had made such a mistake.
At that moment it seemed to him that the queen of spades smiled ironically and winked her eye at him. He was struck by her remarkable resemblance...
"The old Countess!" he exclaimed, seized with terror.

Alexander Pushkin
Send me, Almighty, I petition,
In porticoes or at a ball
No bonneted academician,
No seminarist in a yellow shawl!
No more than in red lips unsmiling
Can I find anything beguiling
In grammar-perfect Russian speech.
What purist magazines beseech,
A novel breed of belles may heed it,
And bend us (for my life of sin)
To strict grammatic discipline,
Prescribing meter, too, where needed;
But I - what is all this to me?
I like things as they used to be

Alexander Pushkin
Moscow: those syllables can start
A tumult in the Russian heart.

Alexander Pushkin