Anna Akhmatova Quotes

Flowers, cold from the dew,And autumn's approaching breath,I pluck for the warm, luxuriant braids,Which haven't faded yet.In their nights, fragrantly resinous,Entwined with delightful mystery,They will breathe in her springlikeExtraordinary beauty.But in a whirlwind of sound and fire,From her shing head they will flutterAnd fall—and before herThey will die, faintly fragrant still.And, impelled by faithful longing,My obedient gaze will feast upon them—With a reverent hand,Love will gather their rotting remains.

~ Anna Akhmatova

Let my heiress have full rights,Live in my house, sing songs that I composed.Yet how slowly my strength ebbs,How the tortured breast craves air.The love of my friends, my enemies' rancorAnd the yellow roses in my bushy garden,And a lover's burning tenderness—all thisI bestow upon you, messenger of dawn.Also the glory for which I was born,For which my star, like some whirlwind, soaredAnd now falls. Look, its fallingProphesies your power, love and inspiration.Preserving my generous bequest,You will live long and worthily.Thus it will be. You see, I am content,Be happy, but remember me.

~ Anna Akhmatova

You will hear thunder and remember me, And think: she wanted storms. The rim Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson, And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.

~ Anna Akhmatova

As the future ripens in the past,so the past rots in the future --a terrible festival of dead leaves.

~ Anna Akhmatova

This cruel age has deflected me,like a river from this course.Strayed from its familiar shores,my changeling life has flowedinto a sister channel.How many spectacles I've missed:the curtain rising without me,and falling too. How many friendsI never had the chance to meet.

~ Anna Akhmatova

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.

~ Anna Akhmatova

My shadow serves as the friend I crave.

~ Anna Akhmatova

Without love, I'm more at ease, I'm sure. The sky is high, the mountain wind is sweeping, And all my thoughts are innocent and pure.

~ Anna Akhmatova

I marvel at everything as if it were new.

~ Anna Akhmatova

If you were music, I would listen to you ceaselessly, and my low spirits would brighten up.

~ Anna Akhmatova

And in the depths of music, I didn’t find the answer,And again there was silence, and again the ghost of summer.

~ Anna Akhmatova

I know: yes, no, even I must tear offThe delicate daisy petals.Everyone on earth is destined to feelThe torments of love.

~ Anna Akhmatova

For this gloomy beast within my breast - A heart. But the thing is,We've all had to learn not to sleep for three years.In the morning we shall find outWho has died in the night.

~ Anna Akhmatova

I have a lot of work to do today; I need to slaughter memory, Turn my living soul to stone Then teach myself to live again.

~ Anna Akhmatova

Forgive me that I felt forsaken, That grief and angst was all I knew. Forgive me that I kept mistaking Too many other men for you.

~ Anna Akhmatova

No one else was as close and as open, No one else so boiled my blood, Even he, who consigned me to torment, Even he, who caressed and forgot.

~ Anna Akhmatova

I’m not weeping, I’m not complaining,Happiness is not for me.

~ Anna Akhmatova

All's taken away: my love and my power.The body, thrown into city it hates,Finds no joy in the sunlight. With every hourThe blood grows colder in my veins.

~ Anna Akhmatova

This land, although not my native land,Will be remembered forever.And the sea's lightly iced,Unsalty water.The sand on the bottom is whiter than chalk,The air is heady, like wine,And the rosy body of the pinesIs naked in the sunset hour.And the sunset itself on such waves of etherThat I just can't comprehendWhether it is the end of the day, the end of the world,Or the mystery of mysteries in me again.

~ Anna Akhmatova

We don't know how to say goodbye,We wander on, shoulder to shoulderAlready the sun is going downYou're moody, and I am your shadow.Let's step inside a church, hear prayers, masses for the deadWhy are we so different from the rest?Outside in the graveyard we sit on a frozen branch.That stick in your hand is tracingMansions in the snow in which we will always be together.

~ Anna Akhmatova

But I am not allowed to forgetThe taste of the tears of yesterday.

~ Anna Akhmatova

I defendNot my voice, but my silence

~ Anna Akhmatova

I've ceased to smile long ago, The bitter winds now chill my lips, Another hope was just let go, Another song was added since. Against my will, I'll cede this song To people's laughter and offense, Because love's silence for the soul Is too unbearably immense.

~ Anna Akhmatova

A town loved with bitter love.

~ Anna Akhmatova

Once taken by her, you glowedAnd you drank her poisons, content. Because all the stars seemed to grow,And fields had a different scent,Autumn fields.

~ 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.

~ Anna Akhmatova

Tomorrow the mirrors will mock me

~ Anna Akhmatova

Beyond the lake the waning moon has slowed,And stands there like a window open wideInto a hushed and brightly lit abodeWhere something dreadful has occurred inside.

~ Anna Akhmatova

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

~ Anna Akhmatova

The angel of God, having secretly Betrothed us one winter day,Watches over our carefree livesWith fixed, darkening eyesBecause of this we love the sky,Keen air, the fresh windAnd the blackening branchesBehind the iron fence.Because of this we love the sternDark city with its many waterways.And we love our partings,And our brief meetings.

~ Anna Akhmatova

Why is it that you still beguile me –As wind, stone, bird – and all the likes? Why is that you smile on me – With sudden summer lightning strikes?

~ Anna Akhmatova

Though you are three times more beautiful than angels,Though you are the sister of the river willows,I will kill you with my singing,Without spilling your blood on the ground.Not touching you with my hand,Not giving you one glance, I will stop loving you,But with your unimaginable groansI will finally slake my thirst.From her, who wandered the earth before me,Crueler than ice, more fiery than flame,From her, who still exists in the ether—From her you will set me free.

~ Anna Akhmatova

All my contemporaries—hundred-and-fivers or convicts—will tell you how we livedin barely sentient fear, raisingchildren for the executioner,prison, or the torture chamber.

~ Anna Akhmatova

In those years only the dead smiled, Glad to be at rest: And Leningrad city swayed like A needless appendix to its prisons.

~ Anna Akhmatova

Let whoever wants to, relax in the south,And bask in the garden of paradise.Here is the essence of north—and it's autumnI've chosen as this year's friend.

~ Anna Akhmatova

It was a time when only the dead smiled, happy in their peace.

~ Anna Akhmatova