Mikhail Lermontov Quotes

43 Sourced Quotes

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.

Mikhail Lermontov
I would make any sacrifice but this; twenty times I can stake my life, even my honour, but my freedom I shall never sell. Why do I prize it so much? … What am I aiming at? Nothing, absolutely nothing.

Mikhail Lermontov
Ever since I lived and entered into action, fate has somehow led me to the climax of other people's dramas...I have always been the essential character of the fifth act.

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

Mikhail Lermontov
... man, this ruler over general evil,
With a perfidious heart, with a lying tongue...

Mikhail Lermontov
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.

Mikhail Lermontov
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.

Mikhail Lermontov
The public of this country is so youthful, not to say simple-minded, that it cannot understand the meaning of a fable unless the moral is set forth at the end. Unable to see a joke, insensible to irony, it has, in a word, been badly brought up. It has not yet learned that in a decent book, as in decent society, open invective can have no place; that our present-day civilisation has invented a keener weapon, none the less deadly for being almost invisible, which, under the cloak of flattery, strikes with sure and irresistible effect.

Mikhail Lermontov
Beneath, the azure current floweth,
Above, the golden sunlight glows.
Rebellious, the storms it wooeth,
As if the storms could give repose.

Mikhail Lermontov
What good are the passions? For sooner or later their sweet sickness ends when reason speaks up;
And life, if surveyed with cold-blooded regard is stupid and empty — a joke.

Mikhail Lermontov
To the earth I gave the earthly tribute
Of love, hopes, good and evil;
I am ready to begin another life,
I am silent and wait: the time has come;
I shall leave no brother in this world,
And dark and cold embrace
My tired soul;
Like a premature fruit, deprived of sap,
It withered in the storms of fate
Under the burning sun of existence.

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

Mikhail Lermontov
A childish feeling, I admit, but, 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.

Mikhail Lermontov
No, I'm not Byron, it's my role
To be an undiscovered wonder,
Like him, a persecuted wand'rer,
But furnished with a Russian soul.

Mikhail Lermontov
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.

Mikhail Lermontov
In people's eyes I read
Pages of malice and sin.

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

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

Mikhail Lermontov