Quotes from Mikhail Lermontov

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Whether I am a fool or a villain I know not; but this is certain, I am also most deserving of pity—perhaps more than she. My soul has been spoiled by the world, my imagination is unquiet, my heart insatiate. To me everything is of little moment. I become as easily accustomed to grief as to joy, and my life grows emptier day by day.

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

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

He has studied all the live strings of the human heart in the same way as one studies the veins of a dead body.

Happiness comes the way the wind blows.

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

Moja je pusta mladost protekla u borbi sa samim sobom i sa svijetom; boje?i se poruge, pokopao sam svoje najbolje osje?aje na dnu srca; ondje su izumrli.

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.

I have carried only a few ideas out of life's storm - and not one feeling. I have long lived according to the head, not the heart. I consider and analyze my personal passions and actions with a strict curiosity, but without sympathy. There are two people within me: one who lives in the full sense of the word, and the other who reasons and judges him.

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

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