Mikhail Lermontov

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

— Mikhail Lermontov

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

— 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

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

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

— 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

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

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 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

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

— Mikhail Lermontov

Women love only those whom they do not know!

— 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

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

— Mikhail Lermontov

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

— 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

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

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

— Mikhail Lermontov

What is this eternity to me without you? A spacious temple — without a divinity!

— Mikhail Lermontov

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

— Mikhail Lermontov

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

— Mikhail Lermontov

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

— Mikhail Lermontov

The chain of young life is broken, Does not feel the worm gnawing it.

— Mikhail Lermontov

I do not love you; the former dream A dethroned idol — still a god!

— Mikhail Lermontov

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

— Mikhail Lermontov

For what did the creator prepare me, The hopes of my youth?...

— Mikhail Lermontov

To the earth I gave the earthly tribute Under the burning sun of existence.

— Mikhail Lermontov

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

— Mikhail Lermontov

The surrounding forest, as though in a mist, He alone wages war — why?'

— 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

No, it is not you I love so ardently, And my perished youth.

— Mikhail Lermontov

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

— Mikhail Lermontov