Mikhail Lermontov Quotes

43 Sourced Quotes

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

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

Mikhail Lermontov
Alone, as before, in the universe
Without hope and without love!..

Mikhail Lermontov
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.

Mikhail Lermontov
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.

Mikhail Lermontov
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.

Mikhail Lermontov
The surrounding forest, as though in a mist,
Was blue in the powder of smoke.
But there, far off, in a disordered ridge,
Which was yet eternally proud and calm,
Stretched the mountains — and Kazbek
Gleamed with its sharp peak.
And with secret, heartfelt sorrow
I thought: 'Pitiable man.
What does he want! The sky is clear,
Beneath it there is much room for all,
But constantly and vainly
He alone wages war — why?'

Mikhail Lermontov
The love of savages isn't much better than the love of noble ladies; ignorance and simple-heartedness can be as tiresome as coquetry.

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

Mikhail Lermontov
The chain of young life is broken,
The journey is ended, the hour has struck, it is time to leave,
Time to go where there is no future,
No past, no eternity, no years;
Where there are no expectations, no passions,
No bitter tears, no fame, no honour;
Where memory sleeps deeply
And the heart in its narrow coffin home
Does not feel the worm gnawing it.

Mikhail Lermontov
A Hero of Our Time, gentlemen, is indeed a portrait, but not of a single individual; it is a portrait composed of all the vices of our generation in the fullness of their development.

Mikhail Lermontov
Women! Women! Who can understand them? Their smiles contradict their glances, their words promise and allure, but the tone of their voice repels.

Mikhail Lermontov
And everything that he saw before him
He despised or hated.

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

Mikhail Lermontov
Of two close friends, one is always the slave of the other.

Mikhail Lermontov
I was involuntarily struck by the aptitude which the Russian displays for accommodating himself to the customs of the people in whose midst he happens to be living. I know not whether this mental quality is deserving of censure or commendation, but it proves the incredible pliancy of his mind and the presence of that clear common sense which pardons evil wherever it sees that evil is inevitable or impossible of annihilation.

Mikhail Lermontov
For what did the creator prepare me,
Why did he so terribly contradict
The hopes of my youth?...

Mikhail Lermontov
No, it is not you I love so ardently,
The glitter of your beauty is not for me:
I love in you my past suffering
And my perished youth.

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

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

Mikhail Lermontov
I was born, so that the whole world could be a spectator
Of my triumph or my doom...

Mikhail Lermontov
I do not love you; the former dream
Of passions and torments has passed by;
But your image in my soul
Is still alive, although it is powerless;
Although I abandon myself to other dreams,
I still cannot forget it;
So an abandoned temple is still a temple,
A dethroned idol — still a god!

Mikhail Lermontov
A solitary sail that rises
White in the blue mist on the foam —
What is it in far lands it prizes?
What does it leave behind at home?

Mikhail Lermontov
And I, as I lived, in an alien land
Will die a slave and an orphan.

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

Mikhail Lermontov
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