Alëna Steiger > Alëna's Quotes

“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.

Struck by the clouds of cruel fate
My crown of Summer bloom is sere
Alone and sad, I watch and wait
And wonder if the end is near.

As conquered by the last cold air
When Winter whistles in the wind
Alone upon a branch that's bare
A trembling leaf is left behind.”
― Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

“The wondrous moment of our meeting...
Still I remember you appear
Before me like a vision fleeting,
A beauty's angel pure and clear.

In hopeless ennui surrounding
The worldly bustle, to my ear
For long your tender voice kept sounding,
For long in dreams came features dear.

Time passed. Unruly storms confounded
Old dreams, and I from year to year
Forgot how tender you had sounded,
Your heavenly features once so dear.

My backwoods days dragged slow and quiet --
Dull fence around, dark vault above --
Devoid of God and uninspired,
Devoid of tears, of fire, of love.

Sleep from my soul began retreating,
And here you once again appear
Before me like a vision fleeting,
A beauty's angel pure and clear.

In ecstasy my heart is beating,
Old joys for it anew revive;
Inspired and God-filled, it is greeting
The fire, and tears, and love alive.”
― Alexander Pushkin

“I have outlasted all desire,
My dreams and I have grown apart;
My grief alone is left entire,
The gleamings of an empty heart.

The storms of ruthless dispensation
Have struck my flowery garland numb,
I live in lonely desolation
And wonder when my end will come.

Thus on a naked tree-limb, blasted
By tardy winter's whistling chill,
A single leaf which has outlasted
Its season will be trembling still.”
― Alexander Pushkin

“But even friendship like our heroes'
Exist no more; for we've outgrown
All sentiments and deem men zeroes--
Except of course ourselves alone.
We all take on Napoleon's features,
And millions of our fellow creatures
Are nothing more to us than tools...
Since feelings are for freaks and fools.
Eugene, of course, had keen perceptions
And on the whole despised mankind,
Yet wasn't, like so many, blind;
And since each rule permits exceptions,
He did respect a noble few,
And, cold himself, gave warmth its due.”
― Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it's these things I'd believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn't all she should be. I love her and it is the beginning of everything.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced--or seemed to face--the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“I'm not sentimental--I'm as romantic as you are. The idea, you know,
is that the sentimental person thinks things will last--the romantic
person has a desperate confidence that they won't.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

“I like people and I like them to like me, but I wear my heart where God put it, on the inside. ”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in the giving, but like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams -- not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“You'll find another.'
God! Banish the thought. Why don't you tell me that 'if the girl had been worth having she'd have waited for you'? No, sir, the girl really worth having won't wait for anybody.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

“It takes two to make an accident.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Love of the Last Tycoon

“Great books write themselves, only bad books have to be written.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation– the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. This philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the "impossible," come true.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up

“A woman should be able to kiss a man beautifully and romantically without any desire to be either his wife or his mistress.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

“His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide. He heard what her eyes said to him from beneath their cowl and knew that in some dim past, whether in life or revery, he had heard their tale before.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”
― James Joyce, Dubliners

“One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.”
― James Joyce, Dubliners

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Stories

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Critic As Artist: With Some Remarks on the Importance of Doing Nothing and Discussing Everything

“I am not young enough to know everything.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The very essence of romance is uncertainty.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

“Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”
― Oscar Wilde