Russian Author Quotes

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Leo Tolstoy

Anton Chekhov

Alexander Pushkin

Vladimir Nabokov

Ivan Turgenev

Anna Akhmatova

True human life does not take place in time but always "is" at the "timeless" point where the past becomes the future - a point which we incorrectly label the present. This is a timeless point, and people are free only at this point.

Actions are sometimes performed in a masterly and most cunning way, while the direction of the actions is deranged and dependent on various morbid impressions - it's like a dream.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Nothing is hidden from the eyes of the observing world.

Alexander Pushkin

My desk, most loyal friend
thank you. You've been with me on
every road I've taken.
My scar and my protection.

Marina Tsvetaeva

A woman is fascinated not by art but by the noise made by those in the field.

Our habit of constantly and zealously answering to any rabble has already done us a lot of harm and will do much more. … We do not have to apologize for anything. We are a people as all other peoples; we do not have any intentions to be better than the rest. As one of the first conditions for equality we demand the right to have our own villains, exactly as other people have them. … We do not have to account to anybody, we are not to sit for anybody's examination and nobody is old enough to call on us to answer. We came before them and will leave after them. We are what we are, we are good for ourselves, we will not change, nor do we want to.

Ze'ev Jabotinsky

Through reason Russia can't be known,
No common yardstick can avail you:
She has a nature all her own —
Have faith in her, all else will fail you.

Fyodor Tyutchev

If I can't have love, if I can't find peace, / Give me a bitter glory.

Of Soviet Government:

But the exchange of thoughts and ideas is not silence, is it? The state considers that uncontrolled information must not be disseminated either at home or abroad. If you read uncensored work, then you have to be prepared to pay the price of imprisonment.

Irina Ratushinskaya

Scrape the surface of language, and you will behold interstellar space and the skin that encloses it.

Velimir Khlebnikov

Such things and deeds as are not written down are covered with darkness, and given over to the sepulchre of oblivion.

Basked in the sun,listened to birds,licked off raindrops,and only in flightthe leaf saw the treeand graspedwhat it had been.

Many men are like unto sausages: whatever you stuff them with, that they will bear in them.

Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy

Humanity has no force more powerful and victorious than science.

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

It's horrifying how fast time flies. It's cold. No rain today. A strong wind. Walked around a lot, slept a lot. I've been sleeping 12–14 hours a day. Maybe that's why time is galloping by so fast.

Who will ride fiery, ahead of the legions,
Nag for a steed, and crusts for meal,
Temper his sword in the heat and in ice storms,
Sleep on straw pallets, labor 'til dawn,
Bring down the armies, the walls and the forts
With but a handful of stout Russian men?

Gavrila Derzhavin

Alas! In vain historians pry and probe: The same wind blows, and in the same live robe Truth bends her head to fingers curved cupwise; And with a woman's smile and a child's care Examines something she is holding there Concealed by her own shoulder from our eyes.

Vladimir Nabokov

In Russia, people suffer from the stillness of time.

Tatyana Tolstaya

The age is rocking the wave
with human grief
to a golden beat, and an adder
is breathing in time with it in the grass.

Osip Mandelstam

Vegetarianism is necessary for the very rich and the very poor. The poor need it because it is cheap and nourishing. The rich, in order to cleanse all the poisons from the corpses that have accumulated in their overfed organism.

Natalia Nordman

My mother, who disliked me from the bottom of her heart, deliberately did everything, it seemed, that would strengthen and intensify my unbounded passion for freedom and a military life. She wouldn't let me walk in the garden. She wouldn't let me be away from her for even half an hour: I had to sit in her bedroom and make lace. She herself taught me to sew, to knit, and seeing that I had neither the desire nor the ability for this sort of work, that in my hands everything tore or broke, she became angry, lost control of herself, and beat me very painfully on the hands.

Nadezhda Durova

Here come the Slavophiles and Nihilists, and none of them have clean fingernails.

Our freedom is but a light that breaks through from another world.

Nikolai Gumilev

God of frostbite, God of famine,
beggars, cripples by the yard,
farms with no crops to examine—
that's him, that's your Russian God.

Peter Vyazemsky