131 Quotes by Mikhail Lermontov

Oh vanity! You are the lever with which Archimedes wanted to raise the earthly globe!

Les joies s’oublient, les peines jamais.

He turned away and offered his hand in parting. She didn’t take it or say anything. But from where I was behind the door I could see her face through the crack. I pitied her to see how deathly pale that sweet little face had gone. Hearing no answer, Pechorin took a few steps towards the door. He was trembling, and I might say I think he was fit to do what he’d threatened as a joke. That’s the sort of man he was, there was no knowing him.

I’m not certain whether I now believe in predestination or not, but that night I firmly believed in it. The proof had been striking, and regardless of the fact that I had ridiculed our forebears and their complacent astrology, I found myself thinking as they did – but I caught myself in time on this dangerous road, and having made it a rule never to reject anything categorically and never to believe in anything blindly, I cast metaphysics aside and began to watch the ground under my feet.

We practically always excuse things when we understand them.