Alexander Pushkin Quotes & Sayings

Sometimes, all company forsaking,
They settle to a game of chess
And, leaning on a table, guess
What move the other may be making,
And Lensky with a dreamy look,
Allows his pawn to take his rook. — Alexander Pushkin

The less we love her when we woo her,
The more we draw a woman in, — Alexander Pushkin

As long as there is one heart on Earth where I still live, my memory will not die. — Alexander Pushkin

Thus heaven's gift to us is this:
That habit takes the place of bliss. — Alexander Pushkin

In alien lands I keep the body
Of ancient native rites and things:
I gladly free a little birdie
At celebration of the spring.
I'm now free for consolation,
And thankful to almighty Lord:
At least, to one of his creations
I've given freedom in this world! — Alexander Pushkin

In this, our age of infamy Man's choice is but to be A tyrant, traitor, prisoner: No other choice has he. — Alexander Pushkin

I do not like Moscow life. You live here not as you want to live, but as old women want you to. — Alexander Pushkin

It's now the British Muse's fables That lie on maidens' bedside tables And haunt their dreams. They worship now The Vampire with his pensive brow, — Alexander Pushkin

Perhaps you'd like, you gentle fellow,
To hear what I'm prepared to say
On "kinfolk" and their implications?
Well, here's my view of close relations:
They're people whom we're bound to prize,
To honor, love, and idolize,
And following the old tradition,
To visit come the Christmas feast,
Or send a wish by mail at least;
All other days they've our permission,
To quite forget us if they please-
So grant them, God, long life and ease! — Alexander Pushkin

For one can live in friendship
With verses and with cards, with Plato and with wine,
And hide beneath the gentle cover of our playful pranks
A noble heart and mind. — Alexander Pushkin

Our northern summers, though, are versions Of southern winters, this is clear; And though we're loath to cast aspersions, They seem to go before they're here! The sky breathed autumn, turned and darkled; The friendly sun less often sparkled; The days grew short and as they sped, The wood with mournful murmur shed Its wondrous veil to stand uncovered; The fields all lay in misty peace; The caravan of cackling geese Turned south; and all around there hovered The sombre season near at hand; November marched across the land. — Alexander Pushkin

Thus people
so it seems to me
Become good friends from sheer ennui. — Alexander Pushkin

Admittedly, his dinners consisted only of two or three courses, and were prepared by an ex-soldier, but the champagne flowed like water. — Alexander Pushkin

We live without power of law, like flocks of ravens
they come and sweep over the land. — Alexander Pushkin

With belles no longer did he fall in love,
but dangled after them just anyhow;
when they refused, he solaced in a twinkle;
when they betrayed, was glad to rest.
He would seek them without intoxication,
while he left them without regret,
hardly remembering their love and spite.
Exactly thus does an indifferent guest
drive up for evening whist:
sits down; then, once the game is over,
he drives off from the place,
at home falls peacefully asleep,
and in the morning does not know himself
where he will drive to in the evening. — Alexander Pushkin

Better the illusions that exalt us than ten thousand truths. — Alexander Pushkin

I was born for the peaceful life,
for rural quiet:
the lyre's voice in the wild is more resounding,
creative dreams are more alive.
To harmless leisures consecrated,
I wander by a wasteful lake
and far niente is my rule.
By every morn I am awakened
unto sweet mollitude and freedom;
little I read, a lot I sleep,
fugitive fame do not pursue.
Was it not thus in former years,
that I spent in inaction, in the shade,
my happiest days? — 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

Habit to us is given from above:
it is a substitute for happiness. — Alexander Pushkin

To "seek inspiration" has always seemed to me a ridiculous and absurd fancy: inspiration cannot be sought out; it must find the poet. For — Alexander Pushkin

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. — Alexander Pushkin

Whoever you be, O my reader-
friend, foe- I wish with you
to part at present as a pal.
Farewell. Whatever you in my wake
sought in these careless strophes-
tumultuous recollections,
relief from labors,
live pictures or bons mots,
or faults of grammar-
God grant that you,
in this book,
for recreation, for the daydream,
for the heart, for jousts in journals,
may find at least a crumb.
Upon which, let us part, farewell! — Alexander Pushkin

Epression still kept guard on him, and chased after him like a shadow - or like a faithful wife. — Alexander Pushkin

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

I foresee all: how I'll annoy
You deeply, by my sad confession:
What bitter scorn in your expression,
How proud the glance you'll employ!
What can I hope for? With what aim
Reveal my soul, and thereafter
Open myself to endless blame,
Prompting your malicious laughter? — Alexander Pushkin

Unrequited love is not an affront to man but raises him. — Alexander Pushkin

Rousseau (I'll note with your permission)
Could not conceive how solemn Grimm
Dared clean his nails in front of him,
The madcap sage and rhetorician.
Champion of rights and liberty,
In this case judged wrong-headedly.
One still can be a man of action
And mind the beauty of one's nails:
Why fight the age's predilection?
Custom's a despot and prevails. — Alexander Pushkin

Sad that our finest aspiration
Our freshest dreams and meditations,
In swift succession should decay,
Like Autumn leaves that rot away. — Alexander Pushkin

A deception that elevates us is dearer than a host of low truths. — Alexander Pushkin

Enough! Clear-souled and far from wasted,
I start upon an untrod way
To take my rest from yesterday. — Alexander Pushkin

What is renoun?more false than hope by dreams engendered. — Alexander Pushkin

Fickle as water,
our life is as dreamlike as smoke
- at our expense,
fate's private joke.
-The Bronze Horseman — Alexander Pushkin

Habit is heaven's gift to us:
a substitute for happiness. — Alexander Pushkin

And these days I've come to prefer the more steady Bordeaux. I am no longer up to champagne from Ay: it's like a mistress: sparkling, flighty, vivacious, wayward - and not to be trusted. But Bordeaux is like a friend who in time of trouble and misfortune stands by us always, anywhere, ready to give us help, or just to share our quiet leisure. So raise your glasses - to our friend Bordeaux! — Alexander Pushkin

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

O flowers, country, love, inaction,
O fields! I am your devotee!
I always note with satisfaction
Onegin's difference from me,
Lest somewhere a sarcastic reader
Or publisher or such-like breeder
Of complicated calumny
Discerns my physiognomy
And shamelessly repeats the fable
That I have crudely versified
Myself like Byron, bard of pride,
As if we were no longer able
To write a poem and discuss
A subject not concerning us. — Alexander Pushkin

How sad, however, if we're given
Our youth as something to betray,
And what if youth in turn is driven
To cheat on us, each hour, each day,
If our most precious aspirations,
Our freshest dreams, imaginations
In fast succession have decayed,
As leaves, in putrid autumn, fade.
It is too much to see before one
Nothing but dinners in a row,
Behind the seemly crowd to go,
Regarding life as mere decorum,
Having no common views to share,
Nor passions that one might declare. — Alexander Pushkin

I loved you; even now I may confess, Some embers of my love their fire retain; But do not let it cause you more distress, I do not want to sadden you again. Hopeless and tongue tied, yet I loved you dearly With pangs the jealous and the timid know; So tenderly I loved you, so sincerely, I pray God grant another love you so. — Alexander Pushkin

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

He who has lived and thought can't help
despising people in his soul;
him who has felt disturbs
the ghost of irrecoverable days;
for him there are no more enchantments;
him does the snake of memories,
him does repentance bite. — 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. — Alexander Pushkin

Mistress-like, its brilliance vain, highly capricious and inane ... — Alexander Pushkin

Moral maxims are surprisingly useful on occasions when we can invent little else to justify our actions. — Alexander Pushkin

I gaze forward without fear. — 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

Fearing no insult, asking for no crown, receive with indifference both flattery and slander, and do not argue with a fool. — Alexander Pushkin

We've got to have forbidden fruit, Or Eden's joys for us are moot. — 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

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

Light-minded society mercilessly persecutes in reality what it allows in theory — Alexander Pushkin

I saw Derzhavin only once in my life but shall never forget that occasion. It was in 1815 at a public examination in the Lyceum. When we boys learned Derzhavin was coming, all of us grew excited. Delvig went out on the stairs to wait for him and kiss his hand, the hand that had written 'The Waterfall.' Derzhavin arrived. Derzhavin entered the vestibule, and Delvig heard him ask the janitor: 'Where is the privy here, my good fellow?' This prosaic question disenchanted Delvig, who canceled his intent and returned to the reception hall. Delvig told me the story with wonderful bonhomie and good humor. — Alexander Pushkin

Don't be sad, don't be angry, if life deceives you! Submit to your grief - your time for joy will come, believe me. — Alexander Pushkin

Whom, then, to love? Whom to believe?
Who is the only one that won't betray us?
Who measures all deeds, all speeches
obligingly by our own foot rule?
Who does not sow slander about us?
Who coddles us with care?
To whom our vice is not so bad?
Who never bores us?
Unlike a futile phantom-seeker
who wastes effort in vain-
love your own self,
my honorworthy reader.
A worthy object! Nothing
more amiable surely exists. — Alexander Pushkin

My whole life has been pledged to this meeting with you ... — Alexander Pushkin

I'm only writing this to show
That I stopped sinning long ago. — 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

Try to be forgotten. Go live in the country. Stay in mourning for two years, then remarry, but choose somebody decent. — Alexander Pushkin

Write for pleasure and publish for money. — Alexander Pushkin

I am married and happy. My only wish is that nothing will change. — Alexander Pushkin

I've lived to se my longings die
I've lived to se my longings die:
My dreams and I have grown apart;
Now only sorrow haunts my eye,
The wages of a bitter heart.
Beneath the storms of hostile fate,
My flowery wreath has faded fast;
I live alone and sadly wait
To see when death will come at last.
Just so, when the winds in winter moan
And snow descends in frigid flakes,
Upon a naked branch, alone,
The final leaf of summer shakes! ... — Alexander Pushkin

From an evil dog be glad of a handful of hairs. — Alexander Pushkin

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

It is better to have dreamed a thousand dreams that never were than never to have dreamed at all. — Alexander Pushkin

Young man! If my notes should fall into your hands, remember that the best and most enduring changes are those which stem from an improvement in moral behaviour, without any violent upheaval. — Alexander Pushkin

I love a friendly chat and a friendly glass of wine during the evening - the time they call, for some accountable reason, 'between dog and wolf'. — Alexander 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

We still, alas, cannot forestall it-
This dreadful ailment's heavy toll;
The spleen is what the English call it,
We call it simply, Russian soul. — Alexander Pushkin

Whoever the priest is, he is called Father. — Alexander Pushkin

I was not born to amuse the Tsars. — 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

He who has lived and thought can never
Help in his soul despising men,
He who has felt will be forever
Haunted by days he can't regain.
For him there are no more enchantments,
Him does the serpent of remembrance,
Him does repentance always gnaw.
All this will frequently afford
A great delight to conversations. — Alexander Pushkin

Tell him that riches will not procure for you a single moment of happiness. Luxury consoles poverty alone, and at that only for a short time, until one becomes accustomed to it. — Alexander Pushkin

My goddesses! Where now? Forsaken?
Oh hearken to my call, I rue:
Are you the same? Have others taken
Your place without replacing you? — Alexander Pushkin

Ever peaceful be you slumber
Though your days were few in number
On this earth-spite took its toll-
Yet shall heaven have your soul
With pure love we did regard you
For your loved one did we guard you
But you came not to the groom
Only to a chill dark tomb — 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

Whom then to love? Whom to have faith in?
Who can there be who won't betray?
Who'll judge a deed or disputation
Obligingly by what we say?
Who'll not bestrew our path with slander?
Who'll cosset us with care and candour?
Oh, ineffectual phantom seeker
You waste your energy in vain:
Love your own self, be your own man,
My worthy, venerable reader!
A worthwhile object: surely who
Could be more lovable than you? — Alexander Pushkin

Ballet is a dance executed by the human soul. — Alexander Pushkin

My dreams, my dreams! What has become of their sweetness? What indeed has become of my youth? — Alexander Pushkin

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 Pushkin

Want of courage is the last thing to be pardoned by young men, who usually look upon bravery as the chief of all human virtues, and the excuse for every possible fault. — Alexander Pushkin

Moral commonplaces are amazingly useful when we can find little in ourselves with which to justify our actions. — Alexander Pushkin

Sauvage, sad, silent,
as timid as the sylvan doe,
in her own family
she seemed a strangeling. — Alexander Pushkin

I want to understand you,
I study your obscure language. — Alexander Pushkin

When I want somebody to read to,
To match a dream with tuneful phrase,
It is my nurse that I pay heed to,
Companion of my youthful days,
Or, following a boring dinner,
A neihbour comes in, who I corner,
Catch at his coat tails suddenly
And choke him with a tragedy,
Or, (here I am no longer jesting),
Haunted by rhymes and yearning's ache,
I roam beside my country lake
And scare a flock of wild ducks resting:
Hearing my strophes' sweet-toned chants,
They fly off from the banks at once. — Alexander Pushkin

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

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

With womankind, the less we love them, the easier they become to charm. — Alexander Pushkin

Somewhere between obsession and compulsion is impulse. — Alexander 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

I am not in the position to sacrifice the essentials of life in the hope of acquiring the luxuries. -Pushkin — Alexander Pushkin

He's happy now, he's almost sane. — Alexander Pushkin

Recalling former years' romances,
Recalling love that time enhances,
With tenderness, with not a care,
Alive, at liberty once more,
We drank, in mute intoxication,
The breath of the indulgent night!
Just as a sleepy convict might
Be carried from incarceration
Into a greenwood, so were we
Borne to our youth by reverie. — Alexander Pushkin

It was thought that the confession of the accused was indispensable to his condemnation, an idea not only unreasonable, but contrary to the most simple good sense in matters of jurisprudence; for if the denial of the accused is not accepted as proof of his innocence, the confession which is torn from him by torture ought to serve still less as proof of his guilt. — Alexander Pushkin

Ecstasy is a glass full of tea and a piece of sugar in the mouth.
[From: 19 Lessons On Tea] — 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

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

Such a beginning presaged nothing good. However, I lost neither courage nor hope. I turned to the consolation of all those in distress, and for the first time tasted the sweetness of prayer, poured forth from a pure but riven heart. I fell asleep serenely, unworried as to what was to become of me. — Alexander Pushkin

Love passed, the Muse appeared, the weather
of mind got clarity new-found;
now free, I once more weave together
emotion, thought, and magic sound. — Alexander Pushkin

Thank you, darling, for learning to play chess. It is an absolute necessity for any well organized family. (in a letter to his wife) — Alexander Pushkin