Quotes from Selected Poems

“... he is rewarded with a form of eternal childhood,
with the bounty and vigilance of the stars,
the whole world was his inheritance
and he shared it with everyone.”
― Anna Akhmatova, quote from Selected Poems

“It is good here: rustle and snow-crunch...
Ski tracks on the splendid finery
of the snow; a memory
that long ages ago
we passed here together.”
― Anna Akhmatova, quote from Selected Poems

“Seaside gusts of wind,
And a house in which we don't live,
And the shadow of a cherished cedar
In front of a forbidden window...
Perhaps there is someone in this world
To whom I could send all these lines. Well then!
Let the lips smile bitterly
And a tremor touch the heart again.”
― Anna Akhmatova, quote from Selected Poems

“I don't know if you're alive or dead.
Can you on earth be sought,
or only when the sunsets fade
be mourned secretly in my thought?

All is for you: the daily prayer,
the sleepless heat at night,
and of my verses, the white
flock, and of my eyes, the blue fire.

No-one was more cherished, no-one tortured
me more, not
even the one who betrayed me to torture,
not even the one who caressed me and forgot.”
― Anna Akhmatova, quote from Selected Poems

“Native Soil

There's
Nobody simpler than us, or with
more pride, or fewer tears.
(1922)

Our hearts don't wear it as an amulet,
it doesn't sob beneath the poet's hand,
nor irritate the wounds we can't forget
in our bitter sleep. It's not the Promised Land.
Our souls don't calculate its worth
as a commodity to be sold and bought;
sick, and poor, and silent on this earth,
often we don't give it a thought.
Yes, for us it's the dirt on our galoshes,
yes, for us it's the grit between our teeth.
Dust, and we grind and crumble and crush it,
the gentle and unimplicated earth.
But we'll lie in it, become its weeds and flowers,
so unembarrassedly we call it - ours.”
― Anna Akhmatova, quote from Selected Poems

“There are not enough faces. Your own gapes back
at you on someone else, but paler, then the moment
when you see the next one and forget yourself.

It must be dreams that makes us different, must be
private cells inside a common skull.
One has the other's look and has another memory.

Despair stares out from tube-trains at itself
running on the platform for the closing door.
Everyone you meet is telling wordless barefaced truths.

Sometimes the crowd yields one you put a name to,
snapping fiction into fact. Mostly your lover passes in the rain and does not know you when you speak.

- I Remember Me”
― Anna Akhmatova, quote from Selected Poems

“Muse

When at night I wait for her to come,
Life, it seems, hangs by a single strand.
What are glory, youth, freedom, in comparison
with the dear welcome guest, a flute in hand?

She enters now. Pushing her veil aside,
she stares through me with her attentiveness.
I question her: 'And were you Dante's guide,
dictating the Inferno?' She answers: 'Yes.”
― Anna Akhmatova, quote from Selected Poems

“And you, my friends who have been called away,
I have been spared to mourn for you and weep,
not as a frozen willow over your memory,
but to cry to the world the names of those who sleep.
What names are those!
I slam shut the calendar,
down on your knees, all!
Blood of my heart,
the people of Leningrad march out in even rows,
the living, the dead: fame can't tell them apart.”
― Anna Akhmatova, quote from Selected Poems

“There are Four of Us

I have turned aside from everything,
from the whole earthly store.
The spirit and guardian of this place
is an old tree-stump in water.

We are brief guests of the earth, as it were,
and life is a habit we put on.
On paths of air I seem to overhear
two friendly voices, talking in turn.

Did I say two?...There
by the east wall's tangle of raspberry,
is a branch of elder, dark and fresh.
Why! It's a letter from Marina.


November 1962 (in delirium)”
― Anna Akhmatova, quote from Selected Poems

“In Dream

Black and enduring separation
I share equally with you.
Why weep? Gove me your hand,
promise me you will come again.
You and I are like high
mountains and we can't move closer.
Just send me word
at midnight sometime through the stars.

1946”
― Anna Akhmatova, quote from Selected Poems

“He loved three things alone:
White peacocks, evensong,
old maps of America.
He hated children crying,
and raspberry jam with his tea,
and womanish hysteria.
...And then he married me.


1911”
― Anna Akhmatova, quote from Selected Poems

“The Last Toast

I drink to our demolished hose,
to all this wickedness,
to you, our loneliness together,
I raise my glass -

And to the dead-cold eyes,
the lie that has betrayed us,
the coarse, brutal world, the fact
that God has not saved us.

1934”
― Anna Akhmatova, quote from Selected Poems

“Lot's Wife

And the just man trailed God's messenger,
his huge, light shape devoured the black hill.
But uneasiness shadowed is wife and spoke to her:
'It's not too late, you can look back still

At the red towers of Sodom, the place that bore you,
the square in which you sang, the spinning-shed,
at the empty windows of that upper storey
where children blessed your happy marriage-bed.'

Her eyes that were still turning when a bolt
of pain shot through them, were instantly blind;
her body turned into transparent salt,
and her swift legs were rooted to the ground.

Who mourns one woman in a holocaust?
Surely her death has no significance?
Yet in my heart she never will be lost,
she who gave up her life to steal one glance.

1922-24”
― Anna Akhmatova, quote from Selected Poems

“So many requests, always, from a lover!
None when they fall out of love.
I'm glad the water does not move
under the colourless ice of the river.

And I'll stand - God help me! - on this ice,
however light and brittle it is,
and you...take care of our letters,
that our descendants not misjudge us,

That they may read and understand
more clearly what you are, wise, brave.
In your glorious biography
No row of dots should stand.

Earth's drink is much too sweet,
love's nets too close together.
May my name be in the textbooks
of children playing in the street.

When they've read my grievous story,
may they smile behind their desklids...
If I can't have love, if I can't find peace,
give me a bitter glory.


1913”
― Anna Akhmatova, quote from Selected Poems

About the author

Popular quotes

“I fall short of thy glory every day by spending hours unprofitably, by thinking that the things I do are good, when they are not done to thy end, nor spring from the rules of thy Word.

[From the prayer, Shortcomings]”
― quote from The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions

“I promise I'll stay as safe as I can. And since Zay refuses to leave me alone, I figure if things get bad, I can always shove him into the line of fire while I run like hell.”
― Devon Monk, quote from Magic to the Bone

“A mí todo aquello me era insoportable, pues no estoy hecho de la madera de los que aguantan a los tontos con absoluta resignación.”
― quote from The Third Eye

“Deborah felt his erection against her stomach and smiled up at him. She grabbed hold of his bum and moved him gently from side to side so that it rocked against her, twitching like Frankenstein's monster in an electric storm.”
― Melvin Burgess, quote from Doing It

“Come,” he whispered. They all were welcome.
They scattered for the racks, seizing their spiked swords, and their sharp axes, and the Bloody-Nine laughed to watch them. Armed or not, their death was a thing already decided. It was written into the cavern in lines of fire and lines of shadow. Now he would write it in lines of blood. “Die!” he roared, and the blade made circles, savage and beautiful, the letter on the metal burning red and leaving bright trails behind. And where the circles passed everything would be made right. The Shanka would scream and gibber, and the pieces of them would scatter, and they would be sliced and divided as neatly as meat on the butcher’s block
The Bloody-Nine showed his teeth, and smiled to be free, and to see the good work done so well. He knocked a barbed sword from a Flathead’s hand, seized it by the scruff of the neck and forced its face down into the channel where the molten steel flowed, furious yellow, and its head hissed and bubbled, shooting out stinking steam.
“Burn!” laughed the Bloody-Nine, and the ruined corpses, and their gaping wounds, and their fallen weapons, and the boiling bright iron laughed with him.
Only the Shanka did not laugh. They knew their hour was come.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from The First Law Trilogy

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.