Quotes from Alexander Pushkin

Write for pleasure and publish for money.

Inspiration is needed in geometry, just as much as in poetry.

Thus people--so it seems to me-- Become good friends from sheer ennui.

Habit is Heaven's own redress: it takes the place of happiness.

Play interests me very much," said Hermann: "but I am not in the position to sacrifice the necessary in the hope of winning the superfluous.

Somewhere between obsession and compulsion is impulse.

I have outlasted all desire, My dreams and I have grown apart; My grief alone is left entire, The gleamings of an empty heart. The storms of ruthless dispensation Have struck my flowery garland numb, I live in lonely desolation And wonder when my end will come. Thus on a naked tree-limb, blasted By tardy winter's whistling chill, A single leaf which has outlasted Its season will be trembling still.

I want to understand you, I study your obscure language.

I have outlasted all desire, My dreams and I have grown apart; My grief alone is left entire, The gleamings of an empty heart. The storms of ruthless dispensation Have struck my flowery garland numb, I live in lonely desolation And wonder when my end will come. Thus on a naked tree-limb, blasted By tardy winter's whistling chill, A single leaf which has outlasted Its season will be trembling still.

I loved you: and, it may be, from my soul The former love has never gone away, But let it not recall to you my dole; I wish not sadden you in any way. I loved you silently, without hope, fully, In diffidence, in jealousy, in pain; I loved you so tenderly and truly, As let you else be loved by any man.

My whole life has been pledged to this meeting with you...

If you but knew the flames that burn in me which I attempt to beat down with my reason.

My dreams, my dreams! What has become of their sweetness? What indeed has become of my youth?

Moral maxims are surprisingly useful on occasions when we can invent little else to justify our actions.

It's a lucky man, a very lucky man, who is committed to what he believes, who has stifled intellectual detachment and can relax in the luxury of his emotions - like a tipsy traveller resting for the night at wayside inn.

depression still kept guard on him, and chased after him like a shadow - or like a faithful wife.

He filled a shelf with a small army of books and read and read; but none of it made sense. .. They were all subject to various cramping limitations: those of the past were outdated, and those of the present were obsessed with the past.

I was not born to amuse the Tsars.

But whom to love? To trust and treasure? Who won't betray us in the end? And who'll be kind enough to measure Our words and deeds as we intend?

People are so like their first mother Eve: what they are given doesn't take their fancy. The serpent is forever enticing them to come to him, to the tree of mystery. They must have the forbidden fruit, or paradise will not be paradise for them.

Thus people--so it seems to me-- Become good friends from sheer ennui.

Ecstasy is a glass full of tea and a piece of sugar in the mouth." [From: 19 Lessons On Tea]

The less we love her when we woo her, The more we draw a woman in

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.