Mikhail Lermontov Quotes

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

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

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

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

An unusual beginning must have an unusual end.

Women love only those whom they do not know!

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

Love, like fire, goes out without fuel.

We almost always forgive those we understand.

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.

Happiness comes the way the wind blows.

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

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.

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.

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

I was modest--they accused me of being crafty: I became secretive. I felt deeply good and evil--nobody caressed me, everybody offended me: I became rancorous. I was gloomy--other children were merry and talkative. I felt myself superior to them--but was considered inferior: I became envious. I was ready to love the whole world--none understood me: and I learned to hate.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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