Mikhail Lermontov Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 80 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Mikhail Lermontov.
Famous Quotes By Mikhail Lermontov
I have carried only a few ideas out of life's storm - and not one feeling. I have long lived according to the head, not the heart. I consider and analyze my personal passions and actions with a strict curiosity, but without sympathy. There are two people within me: one who lives in the full sense of the word, and the other who reasons and judges him. — Mikhail Lermontov
My heart was tightening painfully, as it had after our first parting. Oh, how I was glad of this feeling! Could it be that youth wishes to return to me with its wholesome storms, or is this only its departing glance, its last gift, as a keepsake ... ? — Mikhail Lermontov
My Home
My home is always there,in the heaven's vault,
Where one just hears lyre's sounds,
All with a spark of life have here their resort,
A bard has, too, a space around.
It gets the farthest stars by edges of his roof,
And from a wall to one another
There is a path whose measure can be proved
Not by a look, but by a soul, rather.
A sense of basic truth in every soul nests -
The seed that's sacred and eternal:
In flesh of time it always can embrace
Space, endless, and the century's kernel.
And mighty God has built for this exclusive sense
My home of the light and wonders,
And only here I'm doomed to sufferings at length,
And only here - to calmness. — Mikhail Lermontov
Loneliness
It's Hell for us to draw the fetters
Of life in alienation, stiff.
All people prefer to share gladness,
And nobody - to share grief.
As a king of air, I'm lone here,
The pain lives in my heart, so grim,
And I can see that, to the fear
Of fate, years pass me by like dreams;
And comes again with, touched by gold,
The same dream, gloomy one and old.
I see a coffin, black and sole,
It waits: why to detain the world?
There will be not a sad reflection,
There will be (I am betting on)
Much more gaily celebration
When I am dead, than - born. — Mikhail Lermontov
Can it be, thought I, that my sole mission on earth is to destroy the hopes of others? Ever since I began to live and act, fate has somehow associated me with the last act of other people's tragedies, as if without me no one could either die or give way to despair! I have been the inevitable character who comes in at the final act, involuntarily playing the detestable role of the hangman or the traitor. What has been fate's object in all this? Has it destined me to be the author of middle-class tragedies and family romances
or a purveyor of tales for, say, the Reader's Library? Who knows? Are there not many who begin life by aspiring to end it like Alexander the Great, or Lord Byron, and yet remain petty civil servants all their lives? — Mikhail Lermontov
I was born, so that the whole world could be a spectatorOf my triumph or my doom ... — Mikhail Lermontov
Oh vanity! You are the lever with which Archimedes wanted to raise the earthly globe! — Mikhail Lermontov
My whole life has been merely a succession of miserable and unsuccessful denials of feelings or reason. — Mikhail Lermontov
One should never spurn a penitent criminal: in his despair he may become twice as much a criminal as before. — Mikhail Lermontov
I am not capable of true friendship. One of the two friends is always the slave of the other, although, often, neither of the two admits this to himself. — 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
If I had even been his friend, well and good: the artful indiscretion of the true friend is intelligible to everybody; but I only saw Pechorin once in my life - on the high-road - and, consequently, I cannot cherish towards him that inexplicable hatred, which, hiding its face under the mask of friendship, awaits but the death or misfortune of the beloved object to burst over its head in a storm of reproaches, admonitions, scoffs and regrets. — Mikhail Lermontov
It was clear that he was in love, because he became even more gullible than before. — 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
Of two friends, one is always the slave of the other, although frequently neither acknowledges the fact to himself. — Mikhail Lermontov
Happy people are ignoramuses and glory is nothing else but success, and to achieve it one only has to be cunning. — Mikhail Lermontov
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. — Mikhail Lermontov
Do you know, Princess," said I with a shade of annoyance, "that one should never spurn a repentant sinner, for out of sheer desperation he may become twice as sinful ... — Mikhail Lermontov
Whether I am a fool or a villain I know not; but this is certain, I am also most deserving of pity - perhaps more than she. My soul has been spoiled by the world, my imagination is unquiet, my heart insatiate. To me everything is of little moment. I become as easily accustomed to grief as to joy, and my life grows emptier day by day. — Mikhail Lermontov
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. — Mikhail Lermontov
I felt somehow happy to be so high above the world - a childish feeling, I grant, but we can't help becoming children as we leave social conventions behind and come nearer to nature. All life's experience is shed from us and the soul becomes anew what it once was and will surely be again — 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
He turned away and offered his hand in parting. She didn't take it or say anything. But from where I was behind the door I could see her face through the crack. I pitied her to see how deathly pale that sweet little face had gone. Hearing no answer, Pechorin took a few steps towards the door. He was trembling, and I might say I think he was fit to do what he'd threatened as a joke. That's the sort of man he was, there was no knowing him. — Mikhail Lermontov
Ever since poets have written and women have read them (for which the poets should be most deeply grateful) women have been called angels so many times that, in very truth, in their simplicity of soul, they have believed the compliment, forgetting that, for money, the same poets have glorified Nero as a demigod ... — Mikhail Lermontov
And I, as I lived, in an alien landWill die a slave and an orphan. — Mikhail Lermontov
Do what you will, the heart hardens and the soul shrinks in upon itself. — Mikhail Lermontov
Many a calm river begins as a turbulent waterfall, yet none hurtles and foams all the way to the sea. — 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
Afraid of decision, I buried my finer feelings in the depths of my heart and they died there. — Mikhail Lermontov
I prefer to doubt everything. Such a disposition does not preclude a resolute character. On the contrary, as far as I am concerned, I always advance more boldly when I don't know what is waiting me for me. After all, nothing worse than death can happen-and death you can't escape! — Mikhail Lermontov
No good ever becomes of a man who forgets an old friend — Mikhail Lermontov
In people's eyes I readPages of malice and sin. — Mikhail Lermontov
Ah! Nature is so fair a thing,
Clad with the Sunshine and the Spring! — Mikhail Lermontov
O vanity! you are the lever by means of which Archimedes wished to lift the earth! — Mikhail Lermontov
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. — Mikhail Lermontov
If only people thought a little more about it, they would see that life is not worrying about so much. — Mikhail Lermontov
That disillusionment, moreover, like all other vogues, having had its beginning in the higher strata of society, had descended to the lower, where it was being worn threadbare, and that, now, those who were really and truly bored strove to conceal their misfortune as if it were a vice. — Mikhail Lermontov
For I love enemies, though not in the Christian way. They amuse me and quicken my pulse. To be always on one's guard, to catch every look and the significance of every word, to guess intentions, foil conspiracies, pretend to be deceived and then to overthrow with one blow the whole vast edifice of artifices and designs raised with so much effort - that is what I call life. — Mikhail Lermontov
A strange thing, the human heart in general, and woman's heart in particular. — Mikhail Lermontov
I was ready to love the whole world, but no one understood me, and I learned to hate. — Mikhail Lermontov
Happiness comes the way the wind blows. — Mikhail Lermontov
The story of a man's soul, however trivial, can be more interesting and instructive than the story of a whole nation — Mikhail Lermontov
Evil spawns evil. The first experience of torture gives an understanding of the pleasure in tormenting others. — 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
He has studied all the live strings of the human heart in the same way as one studies the veins of a dead body. — 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
True, we might never have arrived, but the fact is we did. If only people thought a little more about it, they would see that life is not worth worrying about so much. — Mikhail Lermontov
I have an unfortunate character; whether it is my upbringing that made me like that or God who created me so, I do not know. I know only that if I cause unhappiness to others, I myself am no less happy. I realize this is poor consolation for them - but the fact remains that it is so. In my early youth, after leaving the guardianship of my parents, I plunged into all the pleasures money could buy, and naturally these pleasures grew distasteful to me. Then I went into high society, but soon enough grew tired of it; I fell in love with beautiful society women and was loved by them, but their love only aggravated my imagination and vanity while my heart remained desolate ... I began to read and to study, but wearied of learning, too; I saw that neither fame nor happiness depended on it in the slightest, for the happiest people were the ignorant, and fame was a matter of luck, to achieve which you only had to be shrewd ... — 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
He in his madness prays for storms, and dreams that storms will bring him peace — Mikhail Lermontov
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. — Mikhail Lermontov
You too are an exile, I thought. You morn for the broad open steppes where you have room to spread your icy wings. Here you feel stifled and constricted, like an eagle that cries and beats against the bars of its iron cage. — Mikhail Lermontov
We almost always forgive those we understand. — Mikhail Lermontov
Can it be that my single purpose on this earth is to destroy the hopes of others? Since I have been living and breathing, fate has somehow always led me into the dramatic climaxes of others' lives, as if without me no one would be able to die, or to come to despair! I have been the necessary character of the fifth act; I have played the sorry role of executioner or traitor involuntarily. — Mikhail Lermontov
We survive on novelty, so much less demanding than commitment. — Mikhail Lermontov
On a Bare Hill's Top...
On a bare hill's top, in the North, wild and cold,
A lone pine-tree somewhere stands;
She dozes, swaying, all covered by snow
With a mantel from feet to a head.
She sees in her dreams: in a faraway desert,
In lands where the sun enters skies,
Alone and sad, on a rock's sunburnt lather,
A beautiful palm-tree abides. — Mikhail Lermontov
Disenchantment, like any other fashion, having started off among the elite had now been passed down to finish its days among the lower orders. — Mikhail Lermontov
We practically always excuse things when we understand them — 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
Note, my good doctor," said I, "that without fools, society would be a very tiresome place! — 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.
I started sooner, sooner ending,
My mind will never reach so high;
Within my soul, beyond the mending,
My shattered aspirations lie:
Dark ocean answer me, can any
Plumb all your depth with skillful trawl?
Who will explain me to the many?
I ... perhaps God? No one at all? — Mikhail Lermontov
I've an insatiable craving inside me that consumes everything and makes me regard the sufferings and joys of others only in their relationship to me, as food to sustain my spiritual powers. I am no longer capable of loosing my head in love, Ambition has been crushed in me by circumstances, but it has come out in another way, for ambition is nothing but a lust for power and my chief delight is to dominate those around me. To inspire in others love, devotion, fear - isn't that the first symptom and the supreme triumph of power? To cause another person suffering or joy, having no right to do so - isn't that the sweetest food of pride? — Mikhail Lermontov
I have observed that there always exists some strange relationship between the appearance of a man and his soul, as if with the loss of a limb, the soul lost one of its senses. — 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
Tell me," she finally whispered, "is it fun for you to torture me? ... I should really hate you. Ever since we have known each other, you have given me nothing but suffering ... " Her voice trembled, she leaned toward me, and lowered her head onto my breast.
"Perhaps," I thought, "this is exactly why you loved me: joys are forgotten, but sadness, never ... — Mikhail Lermontov
If people would only reason a little more they would be convinced that life is not worth taking such a deal of trouble about. — Mikhail Lermontov
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. — Mikhail Lermontov
There is no feminine gaze that I would not forget at the sight of mountains covered with curly vegetation, and illumined by the southern sun, at the sight of the blue sky, or at the sound of a torrent that falls from crag to crag. — Mikhail Lermontov
I sing whatever comes into my head. It'll be heard by who it's meant for, and who isn't meant to hear won't understand. — Mikhail Lermontov
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? — Mikhail Lermontov
For what did the creator prepare me,Why did he so terribly contradictThe hopes of my youth? ... — Mikhail Lermontov
Women love only those whom they do not know! — Mikhail Lermontov
Passions are merely ideas in their initial stage. They are the property of youth, and anyone who expects to feel their thrill throughout his life is a fool. Tranquil rivers often begin as roaring waterfalls, but no river leaps and foams all the way to the sea. Tranquility, however, is often a sign of great, if hidden, power. Intensity and depth of feeling and thought preclude wild outbursts of passion; in sorrow and joy the soul takes careful stock of every situation, and sees that so it must be. — Mikhail Lermontov
She respects him as a father! And she will cheat on him like a husband! — Mikhail Lermontov
I know a rock in a highland's ravine,
On which only eagles might ever be seen,
But a black wooden cross o'er a precipice reigns,
It rots and it ages from tempests and rains.
And many years have gone without any hints,
From times when it was seen from faraway hills.
And its every arm is raised up to the sky,
As if catching clouds or going to fly.
Oh, if I were able to rise there and stay,
Then how I'd cry there and how I'd pray;
And then I would throw off real life's chains
And live as a brother of tempests and rains! — Mikhail Lermontov
An unusual beginning must have an unusual end. — Mikhail Lermontov