Mikhail Lermontov Quotations

I am like a mariner born and bred on board a buccaneer brig whose soul has become so inured to storm and strife that if cast ashore he would weary and languish no matter how alluring the shady groves and how bright the gentle sun.

A strange thing, the human heart in general, and woman's heart in particular.

Out of life's storm I carried only a few ideas - and not one feeling.

Love, like fire, goes out without fuel.

I was modest--they accused me of being crafty: I became secretive. I felt deeply good and evil--nobody caressed me, everybody offended me: I became rancorous. I was gloomy--other children were merry and talkative. I felt myself superior to them--but was considered inferior: I became envious. I was ready to love the whole world--none understood me: and I learned to hate.

It is sad to see a young man's fondest hopes and dreams shattered when the rose-colured veil is plucked away and he sees the actions and feelings of men for what they are. But he still has the hope of replacing his old illusions with others, just as fleeting, but also just as sweet.

Happy people are ignoramuses and glory is nothing else but success, and to achieve it one only has to be cunning.

When we retire from the conventions of society and draw close to nature, we involuntarily become children: each attribute acquired by experience falls away from the soul, which becomes anew such as it was once and will surely be again.

One should never spurn a penitent criminal: in his despair he may become twice as much a criminal as before.

In people's eyes I readPages of malice and sin.

No good ever becomes of a man who forgets an old friend

The history of a man's soul, even the pettiest soul, is hardly less interesting and useful than the history of a whole people; especially when the former is the result of the observations of a mature mind upon itself, and has been written without any egotistical desire of arousing sympathy or astonishment. Rousseau's Confessions has precisely this defect – he read it to his friends.

We practically always excuse things when we understand them

O vanity! you are the lever by means of which Archimedes wished to lift the earth!

There are two men in me--one lives in the full sense of the word, the other reasons and passes judgment on the first. The first will perhaps take leave of you and the world forever in an hour now; and the second . . . the second?

Of two friends, one is always the slave of the other, although frequently neither acknowledges the fact to himself.

I was lying, but I wanted to rouse him. I have an inborn urge to contradict; my whole life has been a mere chain of sad and futile opposition to the dictates of either heart or reason. The presence of an enthusiast makes me as cold as a midwinter's day, and, I believe, frequent association with a listless phlegmatic would make me an impassioned dreamer.

You men do not understand the delights of a glance, of a pressure of the hand... but as for me, I swear to you that, when I listen to your voice, I feel such a deep, strange bliss that the most passionate kisses could not take its place.

My whole life has been merely a succession of miserable and unsuccessful denials of feelings or reason.

For what did the creator prepare me,Why did he so terribly contradictThe hopes of my youth?...

Women only love those that they don’t know.

Passions are merely ideas in their initial stage.

Evil spawns evil. The first experience of torture gives an understanding of the pleasure in tormenting others.

What of it? If I die, I die. It will be no great loss to the world, and I am thoroughly bored with life. I am like a man yawning at a ball; the only reason he does not go home to bed is that his carriage has not arrived yet.

Russian ladies, for the most part, cherish only Platonic love, without mingling any thought of matrimony with it; and Platonic love is exceedingly embarrassing.

If only people thought a little more about it, they would see that life is not worrying about so much.

I want to reconcile myself with heaven,I want to love, I want to pray,I want to believe in good.

What is this eternity to me without you?What is the infinity of my domains?Empty ringing words,A spacious temple - without a divinity!

We survive on novelty, so much less demanding than commitment.

I was born, so that the whole world could be a spectatorOf my triumph or my doom...

And I, as I lived, in an alien landWill die a slave and an orphan.

Women love only those whom they do not know!

In simple hearts the feeling for the beauty and grandeur of nature is a hundred-fold stronger and more vivid than in us, ecstatic composers of narratives in words and on paper.

Anyone who has chanced like me to roam through desolate mountains and studied at length their fantastic shapes and drunk the invigorating air of their valleys can understand why I wish to describe and depict these magic scenes for others.

We almost always forgive those we understand.

In the first place, [his eyes] never laughed when he laughed. Have you ever noticed this peculiarity some people have? It is either the sign of an evil nature or of a profound and lasting sorrow.

Happiness comes the way the wind blows.

He in his madness prays for storms, and dreams that storms will bring him peace.

my love had grown one with my soul; it became darker, but did not go out

Many a calm river begins as a turbulent waterfall, yet none hurtles and foams all the way to the sea.

An unusual beginning must have an unusual end.

I have a congenital desire to contradict; my whole life is merely a chain of sad and unsuccessful contradictions to heart and mind. When faced with enthusiasm, I am seized by a midwinter freeze, and I suppose that frequent dealings with sluggish phlegmatics would have made a passionate dreamer.

I love enemies, though not in the Christian way. They amuse me, excite my blood. Being always on one’s guard, catching every glance, the significance of every word, guessing at intentions, frustrating their plots, pretending to be tricked, and suddenly, with a shove, upturning the whole enormous and arduously built edifice of their cunning and schemes—that’s what I call life.

Afraid of decision, I buried my finer feelings in the depths of my heart and they died there.

I was ready to love the whole world, but no one understood me, and I learned to hate.