Anna Akhmatova quotes - page 2

The sand as white as old bones, the pine trees strangely red where the sun comes down. I cannot say if it is our love, or the day, that is ending. (Anna Akhmatova)
Thinking of the sun makes my heart beat faster - too fast! What darkness! From this night winter begins. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
But lifting his dry hand He lightly touched the flowers: "Tell me how men kiss you, Tell me how you kiss men." View quote
Anna Akhmatova
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. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
Now everything is clear. I admit my defeat. The tongue of my ravings in my ear is the tongue of a stranger. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
Oh, who would have dared believe that half-crazed I, I, sick with grief for the buried past, I, smoldering on a slow fire, having lost everything and forgotten all, would be fated to commemorate a man so full of strength and will and bright inventions, who only yesterday it seems, chatted with me, hiding the tremor of his mortal pain. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
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... View quote
Anna Akhmatova
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!" View quote
Anna Akhmatova
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. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
There is no death, each of us knows - it's banal to say. I'll leave it to others to explain. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
That woman I once was, in a black agate necklace, I do not wish to meet again till the Day of Judgement. (Anna Akhmatova)
You lived aloof, maintaining to the end your magnificent disdain. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
You thought I was that type: That you could forget me, And that I'd plead and weep And throw myself under the hooves of a bay mare... View quote
Anna Akhmatova
I am in the middle of it: chaos and poetry; poetry and love and again, complete chaos. Pain, disorder, occasional clarity; and at the bottom of it all: only love; poetry. Sheer enchantment, fear, humiliation. It all comes with love. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
Call me a sinner, Mock me maliciously: I was your insomnia, I was your grief. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
I should be proud to have my memory graced, but only if the monument be placed... here, where I endured three hundred hours in line before the implacable iron bars. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
The grave I go to will not be my own. But if I could step outside myself and contemplate the person that I am, I should know at last what envy is. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
I am that shadow on the threshold defending my remnant peace. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
My shadow serves as the friend I crave. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
As the future ripens in the past, so the past rots in the future -- a terrible festival of dead leaves. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
You do not know just what you've been forgiven. (Anna Akhmatova)
Rising from the past, my shadow Is running in silence to meet me. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
Forgive me, that I manage badly, Manage badly but live gloriously, That I leave traces of myself in my songs, That I appeared to you in waking dreams. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
And you know, I agree to everything: I will condemn, I will forget, I will give comfort to the enemy, Darkness will be light and sin lovely. View quote
Anna Akhmatova
Wild honey smells of freedom The dust - of sunlight The mouth of a young girl, like a violet But gold - smells of nothing. View quote
Anna Akhmatova