Nina Ai-Artyan continued...
And if ever in this country
They decide to erect a monument to me,
I consent to that honor
Under these conditions—that it stand
Neither by the sea, where I was born:
My last tie with the sea is broken;
Nor in the tsar’s garden near the cherished pine stump,
Where an inconsolable shade looks for me;
But here, where I stood for three hundred hours,
And where they never unbolted the doors for me.
— Anna Akhamatova
He looked at her as a man might look at a faded flower he had plucked, in which it was difficult for him to trace the beauty that had made him pick and so destroy it.
― Leo Tolstoy, from 'Anna Karenina'
Which is worse? The wolf who cries before eating the lamb or the wolf who does not.
― Leo Tolstoy
He was one of the numerous and varied legions of dullards, of half-animated abortions, conceited, half-educated coxcombs, who attach themselves to the idea most in fashion only to vulgarize it and who caricature every cause they serve, however sincerely.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.
― Leo Tolstoy
