Mikhail Lermontov Quotes

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

Mikhail Lermontov

#2. 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

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

Mikhail Lermontov

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

Mikhail Lermontov

#5. 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

#6. 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

#7. 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

#8. 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

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

Mikhail Lermontov

#10. Women love only those whom they do not know!

Mikhail Lermontov

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

Mikhail Lermontov

#12. Oh vanity! You are the lever with which Archimedes wanted to raise the earthly globe!

Mikhail Lermontov

#13. 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

#14. It was clear that he was in love, because he became even more gullible than before.

Mikhail Lermontov

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

Mikhail Lermontov

#16. 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

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

Mikhail Lermontov

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

Mikhail Lermontov

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

Mikhail Lermontov

#20. Note, my good doctor," said I, "that without fools, society would be a very tiresome place!

Mikhail Lermontov

#21. 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

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

Mikhail Lermontov

#23. 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

#24. We almost always forgive those we understand.

Mikhail Lermontov

#25. 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

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

Mikhail Lermontov

#27. We practically always excuse things when we understand them

Mikhail Lermontov

#28. 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

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

Mikhail Lermontov

#30. 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

#31. Happiness comes the way the wind blows.

Mikhail Lermontov

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

Mikhail Lermontov

#33. 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

#34. 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

#35. 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

#36. Love, like fire, goes out without fuel.

Mikhail Lermontov

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

Mikhail Lermontov

#38. 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

#39. 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

#40. 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

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

Mikhail Lermontov

#42. An unusual beginning must have an unusual end.

Mikhail Lermontov

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

Mikhail Lermontov

#44. Ah! Nature is so fair a thing,
Clad with the Sunshine and the Spring!

Mikhail Lermontov

#45. 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

#46. 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

#47. 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

#48. 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

#49. She respects him as a father! And she will cheat on him like a husband!

Mikhail Lermontov

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

Mikhail Lermontov

#51. Women only love those that they don't know.

Mikhail Lermontov

#52. 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

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

Mikhail Lermontov

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

Mikhail Lermontov

#55. The story of a man's soul, however trivial, can be more interesting and instructive than the story of a whole nation

Mikhail Lermontov

#56. Do what you will, the heart hardens and the soul shrinks in upon itself.

Mikhail Lermontov

#57. 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

#58. 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

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

Mikhail Lermontov

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

Mikhail Lermontov