Russian Poet Quotes

Alexander Pushkin

Ivan Turgenev

Anna Akhmatova

Boris Pasternak

Ivan Bunin

Sergei Yesenin

Alexander Blok

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

Nothing is hidden from the eyes of the observing world.

Alexander Pushkin

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

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

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.

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

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

There is no science for the sake of science, no art for the sake of art—they exist for the sake of society, for the ennoblement and exaltation of man, to enrich his knowledge and provide his material comforts.

Nikolay Nekrasov

The mysterious power of harmony
Will expiate a heavy delusion
And tame a revolting desire.

Yevgeny Baratynsky

It's always the good feel rotten.
Pleasure's for those who are bad.

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

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

Velimir Khlebnikov

One may speak about anything on earth with fire, with enthusiasm, with ecstasy, but one only speaks about oneself with avidity.

Art is interested in life at the moment when the ray of power is passing through it.

Boris Pasternak

They carried him not to bury him:
They carried him down to crown him....
The poet flourished here, disheveled,
Who would not bow before votive lamps But to the common spade.

Andrei Voznesensky

Hell and damnation,
life is such fun
with a ragged greatcoat
and a Jerry gun!

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