231 Quotes by Mikhail Bulgakov

  • Author Mikhail Bulgakov
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    I said that any sort of power is coercion of the people, and that the time will come when there will be no power, neither of the caesars, nor of any other sort of authority. Man will move on to the kingdom of truth and justice where no kind of power will be needed at all.

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  • Author Mikhail Bulgakov
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    Kindly consider the question: what would your good do if evil did not exist, and what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it?

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  • Author Mikhail Bulgakov
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    The White Guard, written in the twenties and dealing with the nearly contemporary events of the Russian civil war in his native Kiev and the Ukraine, a book which in its clear-sighted portrayal of human courage and weakness ranks among the truest depictions of war in all of literature.

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  • Author Mikhail Bulgakov
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    Do you know with whom you are presently speaking?’ Woland asked the visitor. Whose guest are you? ‘I do,’ replied the master, ‘my neighbour in the madhouse was that boy, Ivan Homeless. He told me about you.’ ‘Ah, yes, yes,’ Woland responded, ‘I had the pleasure of meeting that young man at the Patriarch’s Ponds. He almost drove me mad myself, proving to me that I don’t exist. But you do believe that it is really I?

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  • Author Mikhail Bulgakov
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    Let me have a look.’ Woland stretched out his hand palm uppermost. ‘Unfortunately I cannot show it to you,’ replied the master, ‘because I burned it in my stove.’ ‘I’m sorry but I don’t believe you,’ said Woland. ‘You can’t have done. Manuscripts don’t burn.

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  • Author Mikhail Bulgakov
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    His swearing is methodical, continuous, and apparently entirely senseless.

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  • Author Mikhail Bulgakov
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    All the words he used in the beginning were gutter words. He heard them and stored them in his brain. Now, as I walk in the street, I look at dogs with secret horror. WHo knows what is hidden in their heads?

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  • Author Mikhail Bulgakov
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    That’s really bad,” concluded the host, “say what you will, but there’s something evil lurking in men who avoid wine, games, the society of delightful women, table talk. Such people are either gravely ill or secretly hate those around them. True, exceptions are possible. Among those who have sat down with me at the banqueting table, there have sometimes been some astonishing scoundrels! And so, I’m listening to why you’re here.

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  • Author Mikhail Bulgakov
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    But this is what disturbs me: if there is no God, then, the question is, who is in control of man’s life and the whole order of things on earth?

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