Anna Akhmatova Quotes

I don't mourn the dead. I mourn the living.

It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.

This whole country is a graveyard, and we are all constantly walking on the bones

Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before I have in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. Looking Glass is dead. Toohoolhoolzote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes and no. He who led the young men is dead. It is cold and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets; no food; no one knows where they are, perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children and see how many I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs. I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.

When life is woe, and hope is dumb, the World says, "Go!" The Grave says, "Come!

In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons.

Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war.

Through this same man and me hath all this war been wrought, and the death of the most noblest knights of the world; for through our love that we have loved together is my most noble lord slain.

Being over seventy is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive amongst the dead and the dying as on a battlefield.

My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.

I watched children dying. That will be the image that will stay with me.

To me, death is dark, pain, grief.

It is not easy to talk about peace to people who are mourning every day.

The living will envy the dead.

Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind. Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky And the affrighted steed ran on alone, Do not weep. War is kind. Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment, Little souls who thirst for fight, These men were born to drill and die. The unexplained glory flies above them, Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom -A field where a thousand corpses lie. Do not weep, babe, for war is kind.

Hope is a punishable offense. The verdict is always death; one more death of the heart.

That was when the ones who smiled Were the dead, glad to be at rest.

Love of love written by the broken hearted, love of life written by the dead.

It's kinda hard to be optimistic, When your homies lying dead on the pavement twisted.

We each die countless little deaths on our way to the last. We die out of shame as humiliation. We perish from despair. And, of course, we die for love.

Futility Move him into the sun - Gently its touch awoke him once, At home, whispering of fields unsown. Always it woke him, even in France, Until this morning and this snow. If anything might rouse him now The kind old sun will know. Think how it wakes the seeds, - Woke, once, the clays of a cold star. Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides, Full-nerved -still warm -too hard to stir? Was it for this the clay grew tall? -O what made fatuous sunbeams toil To break earth's sleep at all?

Unwearied, and with springing steps elate, I had conveyed my wealth along the road. The empty sack proved now a heavier load: I was borne down beneath its worthless weight. I stumbled on, and knocked at Death's dark gate. There was no answer. Stung by sorrow's goad I forced my way into that grim abode, And laughed, and flung Life's empty sack to Fate.

War would end if the dead could return.

We have been travelling through a cloud. The sky has been dark ever since the war began.