Mikhail Lermontov Quotes
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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.
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Many a calm river begins as a turbulent waterfall, yet none hurtles and foams all the way to the sea.
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I was born, so that the whole world could be a spectator Of my triumph or my doom.
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What is this eternity to me without you? What is the infinity of my domains? Empty ringing words, A spacious temple - without a divinity!
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He in his madness prays for storms, and dreams that storms will bring him peace.
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We survive on novelty, so much less demanding than commitment.
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We practically always excuse things when we understand them.
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I want to reconcile myself with heaven, I want to love, I want to pray, I want to believe in good.
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A strange thing, the human heart in general, and woman's heart in particular.
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Russian ladies, for the most part, cherish only Platonic love, without mingling any thought of matrimony with it; and Platonic love is exceedingly embarrassing.
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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.
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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.
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My love had grown one with my soul; it became darker, but did not go out.
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Happiness comes the way the wind blows.
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Love, like fire, goes out without fuel.
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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.
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And I, as I lived, in an alien land Will die a slave and an orphan.
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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.
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My whole life has been merely a succession of miserable and unsuccessful denials of feelings or reason.
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For what did the creator prepare me, Why did he so terribly contradict The hopes of my youth?
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No good ever becomes of a man who forgets an old friend.
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Out of life's storm I carried only a few ideas - and not one feeling.
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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?
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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.