Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina
Anna Akhmatova
76 quotes
“In the black sky no star is seen, somewhere in ambush lurks the Angel of Death, but the spices tongues of the masqueraders are loose and shameless A shout: "Make way for the hero!" Ah yes. Displacing the tall one, he will step forth now without fail and sing to us about holy vengeance...”
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no death, each of us knows — it's banal to say. I'll leave it to others to explain.”
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Is this the visitor from the wrong side of the mirror? Or the shape that suddenly flitted past my window? Is it the new moon playing tricks, or is someone really standing there again between the stove and the cupboard?”
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This means that gravestones are fragile and granite is softer than wax. Absurd, absurd, absurd! From such absurdity I shall soon turn gray or change into another person. Why do you beckon me with your hand? For one moment of peace I would give the peace of the tomb.”
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No foreign sky protected me, no stranger's wing shielded my face. I stand as witness to the common lot, survivor of that time, that place. — 1961”
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Translated in Poems of Akhmatova (1973) by Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward
“Such grief might make the mountain stoop, reverse the waters where they flow, but cannot burst these ponderous bolts that block us from the prison cells crowded with mortal woe...”
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror, I spent seventeen months in the prison lines of Leningrad. Once, someone "recognized" me. Then a woman with bluish lips standing behind me, who, of course, had never heard me called by name before, woke up from the stupor to which everyone had succumbed and whispered in my ear (everyone spoke in whispers there): "Can you describe this?" And I answered: "Yes, I can." Then something that looked like a smile passed over what had once been her face.”
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) first seen 1957 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Leningrad, 1 April 1957
“For some the wind can fleshly blow, for some the sunlight fade at ease, but we, made partners in our dread, hear but the grating of the keys, and heavy-booted soldiers' tread. As if for early mass, we rose and each day walked the wilderness, trudging through silent street and square, to congregate, less live than dead.”
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Where are they now, my nameless friends from those two years I spent in hell? What specters mock them now, amid the fury of Siberian snows, or in the blighted circle of the moon? To them I cry, Hail and Farewell! — March 1940”
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That was a time when only the dead could smile, delivered from their wars, and the sign, the soul, of Leningrad dangled outside its prison-house...”
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The stars of death stood over us. And Russia, guiltless, beloved, writhed under the crunch of bloodstained boots, under the wheels of Black Marias.”
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“At dawn they came and took you away. You were my dead: I walked behind. In the dark room children cried, the holy candle gasped for air.”
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This woman is sick to her marrow-bone, this woman is utterly alone, with husband dead, with son away in jail. Pray for me. Pray.”
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Not, not mine: it's somebody else's wound. I could never have borne it. So take the thing that happened, hide it, stick it in the ground. Whisk the lamps away... Night.”
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For seventeen months I have cried aloud calling you back to your lair. I hurled myself at the hangman's foot. You are my son, changed into nightmare. Confusion occupies the world, and I am powerless to tell somebody brute from something human, or on what day the word spells, "Kill!”
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The word dropped like a stone on my still living breast. Confess: I was prepared, am somehow ready for the test.”
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Translated by Judith Hemschemeyer from Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova (1989)
“Today I have so much to do: I must kill memory once and for all, I must turn my soul to stone, I must learn to live again— Unless ... Summer's ardent rustling Is like a festival outside my window.”
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Translated by Judith Hemschemeyer from Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova (1989)
“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 —”
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's all the same to me. The Yenisei swirls, the North Star shines, as it will shine forever; and the blue lustre of my loved one's eyes is clouded over by the final horror. — The House on the Fontanka, 19 August 1939”
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Already madness lifts its wing to cover half my soul.”
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now everything is clear. I admit my defeat. The tongue of my ravings in my ear is the tongue of a stranger.”
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No use to fall down on my knees and beg for mercy's sake. Nothing I counted mine, out of my life, is mine to take...”
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A choir of angels glorified the hour, the vault of heaven was dissolved in fire. "Father, why hast Thou forsaken me? Mother, I beg you, do not weep for me...”
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Translated by Tanya Karshtedt (1996)
“Mary Magdalene beat her breasts and sobbed, His dear disciple, stone-faced, stared. His mother stood apart. No other looked into her secret eyes. Nobody dared. — 1940-1943”
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Translated by Tanya Karshtedt (1996)
“I have learned how faces fall to bone, how under the eyelids terror lurks, how suffering inscribes on cheeks the hard lines of its cuneiform texts, how glossy black or ash-fair locks turn overnight to tarnished silver, how smiles fade on submissive lips, and fear quavers in a dry titter. And I pray not for myself alone.. for all who stood outside the jail, in bitter cold or summer's blaze, with me under that blind red wall.”
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I've woven them a garment that's prepared out of poor words, those that I overheard, and will hold fast to every word and glance all of my days, even in new mischance, and if a gag should bind my tortured mouth, through which a hundred million people shout, then let them pray for me, as I do pray for them, this eve of my remembrance day.”
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source