Alexander Pushkin

Fearing no insult, asking for no crown, receive with indifference both flattery and slander, and do not argue with a fool.

A deception that elevates us is dearer than a host of low truths.

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.

I was not born to amuse the Tsars.

I do not like Moscow life. You live here not as you want to live, but as old women want you to.

To “seek inspiration” has always seemed to me a ridiculous and absurd fancy: inspiration cannot be sought out; it must find the poet.

With womankind, the less we love them, the easier they become to charm.

Please, never despise the translator. He's the mailman of human civilization.

My uncle is a man of honour, When in good earnest he fell ill, He won respect by his demeanour. And found the role he best could fill. Let others profit by his lesson, But, oh my god, what desolation. To tend a sick man day and night. And not to venture from his sight! What shameful cunning to be cheerful. With someone who is halfway dead, To prop up pillows by his head, To bring him medicine, looking tearful, To sigh – while inwardly you think: When will the devil let him sink?

Heavy art thou, cap of Monomakh!

Against sweet passion's fire the sole defense, The shroud that shields a lover's recompense, And serves to cover up such sweet delights, Oh skirt! You are the one I now beseech, To you I hereby dedicate this speech. May love inspire all that my pen writes!

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.

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.

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.

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.

Write for pleasure and publish for money.

Light-minded society mercilessly persecutes in reality what it allows in theory.

I've lived to bury my desires, And see my dreams corrode with rust; Now all that's left are fruitless fires That burn my empty heart to dust.

O Monarchs, ye are crowned by will, and law of Man, not Nature's hand. Though ye above the people stand, eternal Law stands higher still.