About Mikhail Lermontov: Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov is still felt in modern times, not only through his poetry, but also through his prose, which founded the tradition of the Russian psychological novel.
We practically always excuse things when we understand them
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 ...
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 wha...
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 ...
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.
Love, like fire, goes out without fuel.
No good ever becomes of a man who forgets an old friend
A strange thing, the human heart in general, and woman's heart in particular.
De geschiedenis van een mensenziel , zelfs van de allergeringste, is haast belangwekkender en leerrijker dan de geschiedenis van een geheel volk, vooral wanneer zij het resultaat is van een heldere geest, en wanneer zij geschreven is zonder ijdele we...
The story of a man's soul, however trivial, can be more interesting and instructive than the story of a whole nation
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.
Many a calm river begins as a turbulent waterfall, yet none hurtles and foams all the way to the sea.
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 wi...
He in his madness prays for storms, and dreams that storms will bring him peace
The story of a man's soul, however trivial, can be more interesting and instructive than the story of a whole nation, especially if it is based on the self-analysis of a mature mind and is written with no vain desire to rouse our sympathy and curiosi...
Happy people are ignoramuses and glory is nothing else but success, and to achieve it one only has to be cunning.
