29 quotes
Why rave ye, babblers, so -- ye lords of popular wonder?
To the Slanderers of Russia (1831)
The less we love a woman the easier 'tis to be liked by her, and thus more surely we undo her amid seductive toils.
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.
Eugene Onegin (1823)
The clock of doom had struck as fated;
the poet, without a sound,
let fall his pistol on the ground.
Eugene Onegin (1823)
The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths.
Always contented with his life,
and with his dinner, and his wife.
Eugene Onegin (1823)
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.
The Queen of Spades (1833)
Habit is Heaven's own redress:
it takes the place of happiness.
Eugene Onegin (1823)
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.
Eugene Onegin (1823)
Upon the brink of the wild stream
He stood, and dreamt a mighty dream.
Another memory finds me ready:
In cherished dreams I sometimes stand
And hold the lucky stirrup steady,
Then feel her foot within my hand!
No bird flies near, no tiger creeps;
alone the whirlwind, wild and black,
assails the tree of death and sweeps
away with death upon its back.
The heavy hanging chains shall fall,
The walls shall crumble at the word,
And Freedom greet you with the light
And brothers give you back the sword.
And shall Slavonic streams meet in a Russian ocean --
To the Slanderers of Russia (1831)
"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?
The Queen of Spades (1833)
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.
Like some magistrate grown gray in office,
Calmly he contemplates alike the just
And unjust, with indifference he notes
Evil and good, and knows not wrath nor pity.
Boris Godunov (1825)
Sad that our finest aspiration
Our freshest dreams and meditations,
In swift succession should decay,
Like Autumn leaves that rot away.
Eugene Onegin (1823)
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.
Eugene Onegin (1823)
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.
Eugene Onegin (1823)