131 Quotes by Mikhail Lermontov

It is sad to see a young man's fondest hopes and dreams shattered when the rose-colured veil is plucked away and he sees the actions and feelings of men for what they are. But he still has the hope of replacing his old illusions with others, just as fleeting, but also just as sweet.

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

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.

One should never spurn a penitent criminal: in his despair he may become twice as much a criminal as before.

In people's eyes I readPages of malice and sin.

The history of a man's soul, even the pettiest soul, is hardly less interesting and useful than the history of a whole people; especially when the former is the result of the observations of a mature mind upon itself, and has been written without any egotistical desire of arousing sympathy or astonishment. Rousseau's Confessions has precisely this defect – he read it to his friends.

O vanity! you are the lever by means of which Archimedes wished to lift the earth!

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?

Of two friends, one is always the slave of the other, although frequently neither acknowledges the fact to himself.