"The less we show our love to a woman, Or please her less, and neglect our duty, The more we trap and ruin her surely In the flattering toils of philandery."

"Send me, Almighty, I petition, In porticoes or at a ball No bonneted academician, No seminarist in a yellow shawl! No more than in red lips unsmiling Can I find anything beguiling In grammar-perfect Russian speech. What purist magazines beseech, A novel breed of belles may heed it, And bend us (for my life of sin) To strict grammatic discipline, Prescribing meter, too, where needed; But I - what is all this to me? I like things as they used to be"

"Привычка свыше нам дана: Замена счастию она."

"Прошла любовь, явилась Муза, И прояснился темный ум. Свободен, вновь ищу союза Волшебных звуков, чувств и дум;"

"Недуг, которого причину Давно бы отыскать пора, Подобный английскому сплину, Короче: русская хандра"

"A man who's active and incisive can yet keep nail-care much in mind: why fight what's known to be decisive? custom is despot of mankind."

"Всегда довольный сам собой, Своим обедом и женой."

"Но так и быть — рукой пристрастной Прими собранье пестрых глав, Полусмешных, полупечальных, Простонародных, идеальных, Небрежный плод моих забав, Бессониц, легких вдохновений, Незрелых и увядших лет, Ума холодных наблюдений И сердца горестных замет."

"Come purge my soul, Thou Master of my days, Of vain and empty words, of idle ways, Of base ambition and the urge to rule; That hidden serpent that corrupts a fool; and grant me, Lord, to see my sins alone. That I not call my brother to atone; Make chaste my heart and lend me from above Thy fortitude, humility, and love."

"What grace could all your worldly power bring To One whose crown of thorns has made him King, The Christ who gave His body to the flails, Who humbly bore the lance and piercing nails? Or do you fear the rabble might disgrace The One."

"God grant you, friends, a helping hand— In cares of state and private plights, In rowdy feasts of friendship's band, In passion's sweet and secret rites! God grant you, friends, a helping hand— In daily woes and days of strife, On vacant sa, in distant land, In every black abyss of life!"

"When the loud day for men who sow and reap Grows still, and on the silence of the town The insubstantial veils of night and sleep, The meed of the day's labour, settle down, Then for me in the stillness of the night The wasting, watchful hours drag on their course, And in the idle darkness comes the bite Of all the burning serpents of remorse; Dreams seethe; and fretful infelicities Are swarming in my over-burdened soul, And Memory before my wakeful eyes With noiseless hand unwinds her lengthy scroll. Then, as with loathing I peruse the years, I tremble, and I curse my natal day, Wail bitterly, and bitterly shed tears, But cannot wash the woeful script away."

"The heavy hanging chains shall fall, The walls shall crumble at the word, And Freedom greet you with the light And brothers give you back the sword."

"‘Tis time, my friend, ‘tis time! For rest the heart is aching; Days follow days in flight, and every day is taking Fragments of being, while together you and I Make plans to live. Look, all is dust, and we shall die."

"And thus He mused: "From here, indeed Shall we strike terror in the Swede? And here a city by our labor Founded, shall gall our haughty neighbor; "Here cut" - so Nature gives command - Your window through on Europe; stand Firm-footed by the sea, unchanging!"

"‎На берегу пустынных волн Стоял он, дум великих полн,"

"God save us from seeing a Russian revolt, senseless and merciless. Those who plot impossible upheavals among us, are either young and do not know our people, or are hard-hearted men who do not care a straw either about their own lives or those of others."

"The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths."

"There yet remains but one concluding tale, And then this chronicle of mine is ended— Fulfilled, the duty God ordained to me, A sinner. Not without purpose did the Lord Put me to witness much for many years And educate me in the love of books. One day some indefatigable monk Will find my conscientious, unsigned work; Like me, he will light up his ikon-lamp And, shaking from the scroll the age-old dust, He will transcribe these tales in all their truth."

"For darkness restores what light cannot repair. There we are married, blest, we make once more the two-backed beast and children are the fair excuse of what we're naked for."

"You know, when you go outside on the streets after having spent the day writing, you feel like a foreign body, even in your own country. This sensation perhaps feels more natural when you are really outside your country."

"It is better to be a total failure in democracy than a martyr or the crème de la crème in tyranny."

"He’d be a ruin by now, both physically and mentally. Physically because of the bottle. . . . Mentally because of that mixture of impotence and cynicism that corrodes everyone there — the stronger you are the worse it is."

"I admire Joseph for his industry, his valor, and his intelligence. He's a terrific example of someone who is a complete poet, who doesn't treat poetry as anything else but a very hard job that he does as well as he can. Lowell worked very hard too, but you feel in Joseph that that is all he lives for. In a sense that's all any of us lives for or can hope to live for. Joseph's industry is an example that I cherish a great deal."

"I wish you were here, dear, I wish you were here. I wish you sat on the sofa and I sat near."

"As you pour yourself a scotch, crush a roach, or scratch your crotch, as your hand adjusts your tie, people die."

"It is the army that finally makes a citizen of you; without it you still have a chance, however slim, to remain a human being."

"The formula for prison is a lack of space counterbalanced by a surplus of time. This is what really bothers you, that you can't win. Prison is lack of alternatives, and the telescopic predictability of the future is what drives you crazy."

"This is just one example of the trimming of the self that — along with the language itself, where verbs and nouns changed places as freely as one dare to have them do so — bred in us such an overpowering sense of ambivalence that in ten years we ended up with a willpower in no way superior to a seaweed’s."

"The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even — if you will — eccentricity. That is, something that can't be feigned, faked, imitated; something even a seasoned imposter couldn't be happy with. Something, in other words, that can't be shared, like your own skin: not even by a minority. Evil is a sucker for solidity. It always goes for big numbers, for confident granite, for ideological purity, for drilled armies and balanced sheets. Its proclivity for such things has to do with its innate insecurity, but this realization, again, is of small comfort when Evil triumphs."