131 Quotes by Mikhail Lermontov

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.

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.

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

For what did the creator prepare me,Why did he so terribly contradictThe hopes of my youth?...

Women only love those that they don’t know.

Passions are merely ideas in their initial stage.

Evil spawns evil. The first experience of torture gives an understanding of the pleasure in tormenting others.

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.

Russian ladies, for the most part, cherish only Platonic love, without mingling any thought of matrimony with it; and Platonic love is exceedingly embarrassing.