Alexander Pushkin Quotes

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.

The noontide of my life is starting,Which I must needs accept, I know;But oh, my light youth, if we're parting,I want you as a friend to go!My thanks to you for the enjoyments,The sadness and the pleasant torments,The hubbub, storms, festivity,For all that you have given me;My thanks to you. I have delightedIn you when times were turbulent,When times were calm... to full extent;Enough now! With a soul clear-sightedI set out on another questAnd from my old life take a rest.Let me glance back. Farewell, you arboursWhere, in the backwoods, I recallDays filled with indolence and ardoursAnd dreaming of a pensive soul.And you, my youthful inspiration,Keep stirring my imagination,My heart's inertia vivify,More often to my corner fly.Let not a poet's soul be frozen,Made rough and hard, reduced to boneAnd finally be turned to stoneIn that benumbing world he goes in,In that intoxicating sloughWhere, friends, we bathe together now.

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 mightBe carried from incarcerationInto a greenwood, so were weBorne to our youth by reverie.

He who has lived and thought can neverHelp in his soul despising men,He who has felt will be foreverHaunted 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 affordA great delight to conversations.

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 suddenlyAnd choke him with a tragedy,Or, (here I am no longer jesting),Haunted by rhymes and yearning's ache,I roam beside my country lakeAnd scare a flock of wild ducks resting:Hearing my strophes' sweet-toned chants,They fly off from the banks at once.

Blest who was youthful in his youth;blest who matured at the right time;who gradually the chill of lifewith years was able to withstand;who never was addicted to strange dreams;who did not shun the fashionable rabble;who was at twenty fop or blade,and then at thirty, profitably married;who rid himself at fiftyof private and of other debts;who fame, money, and rankin due course calmly gained;about whom lifelong one kept saying:N. N. is an excellent man.But it is sad to think that to no purposeyouth was given us,that we betrayed it every hour,that it duped us;that our best wishes,that our fresh dreamings,in quick succession have decayedlike leaves in putrid autumn.It is unbearable to see before oneonly of dinners a long series,to look on life as on a rite,and in the wake of the decorous crowdto go, not sharing with iteither general views, or passions.