Anna Akhmatova Quotes

Not a single muscle quivered On his radiantly evil face. Oh, I know: his delight Is the tense and passionate knowledge That he needs nothing, That I can refuse him nothing.

He loved three things
in this life:
Vespers, white peacocks,
And old maps of America,
Didn't love children crying,
Raspberries with tea,
Or feminine hysteria
...And I
was his wife.

We aged a hundred years, and this happened in a single hour: the short summer had already died, the body of the ploughed plains smoked.

Dostoyevsky knew a lot but not everything. He, for instance, thought that if you kill a human you'll turn into Raskolnikov. But we know now that one can kill five - ten, one hundred people - and go to the theatre in the evening.

Isn't it the sea?
No, it's only graveyard
Pine-needles, and in a boiling of foam,
Still closer,closer...
Marche funèbre

Before the spring arrives there are such days:
Under the thick snow cover rests the lawn,
The dry-and-jolly trees are making noise,
Tender and strong, the wind is warm.

And body is amazed at its own lightness,
And your own home is alien to you,
And song that had just previously been tiring
With worry you are singing just like new.

Autumn, whispering through the maples,
Pleaded: 'Die here with me!

If I can’t have love, if I can’t find peace, give me a bitter glory.

You will come in any case — so why not now? How long I wait and wait. The bad times fall. I have put out the light and opened the door for you, because you are simple and magical. Assume, then, any form that suits your wish, take aim, and blast at me with poisoned shot, or strangle me like an efficient mugger, or else infect me — typhus be my lot —

Your voice is wild and simple.
You are untranslatable
Into any one tongue.

But at this moment he surely knows sorrow
No less than the wise and the old.
It seems that his eyes have begun to grow narrow,
And their brilliant light is now cold.

Now everything is clear. I admit my defeat. The tongue of my ravings in my ear is the tongue of a stranger.

No sadness, my soul’s no more of this world.

Song falls silent, music is dumb,
But the air burns with their fragrance,
And white winter, on its knees,
Observes everything with reverent attention.

I’m happy. But some beauty is nonesuch -
The gently sloping path across the wood,
The wretched bridge that’s just a little skewed
And that, for which, I won’t be waiting much.