Poor Liza Quotes

“He desired more, yet more, and finally was not able to desire anything—for whoever knows his heart, whoever has reflected upon the moral nature of man, will certainly agree with me that there can be no pleasure for us without desire.”
― Nikolay Karamzin, Poor Liza

“It is strange, strange, my friend, that I could have lived peacefully and happily before I came to know you! This is incomprehensible to me now; now I think that without you, life is not life but rather melancholy and boredom. Without your eyes, the bright moon is dark; without your voice, the nightingale's song is tiresome; without your breathing, the gentle breeze is disagreeable.”
― Nikolay Karamzin, Poor Liza

“How good is everything that comes from the Lord God! I have lived to see three score years on this earth, and yet I never tire of looking at the Lord's works, never tire of looking at the clear sky rising like a high tent and at the earth, which each year is covered anew in grass and flowers. It must be so that the King of Heaven loves us very much, since He has adorned our world so well.”
― Nikolay Karamzin, Poor Liza

“Her sweet daughter brightened all of nature with her merriment.”
― Nikolay Karamzin, Poor Liza

“Oh! He kissed her, kissed her with such ardor that the entire universe appeared to her to be ablaze!”
― Nikolay Karamzin, Poor Liza

“Nature summons me into its embrace, to its unsullied joys.”
― Nikolay Karamzin, Poor Liza

“Upon their first meeting, Liza's beauty had made an impression in his heart. He read novels and idylls, had a rather lively imagination, and in his mind frequently transported himself back to those times (real or imagined) when, according to the accounts of poets, everyone strolled lightheartedly through meadows, bathed in the waters of pure springs, kissed like turtledoves, reclined in the shade of rose and myrtle beaches, and spent all their days in happy idleness. It appeared to him that he had found in Liza what his heart had long sought.”
― Nikolay Karamzin, Poor Liza

“Oh! How I love those subjects that touch my heart and compel me to shed tears of tender sorrow!”
― Nikolay Karamzin, Poor Liza

“There, resting on the ruins of gravestones, I hearken to the dull moan of times now devoured by the abyss of the past - a moan which causes my heart to shudder and tremble.”
― Nikolay Karamzin, Poor Liza

“Who would want to die if at times we did not feel sorrow? ... Evidently it must be so. Perhaps we would forget our soul if tears never flowed from our eyes.”
― Nikolay Karamzin, Poor Liza