Wide World of Quotes > Mikhail Lermontov Quotes


Mikhail Lermontov
Russian writer, poet, painter and soldier of the Romantic period
(1814-41)



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I was travelling post from Tiflis. The only luggage I had on my cart was one small portmanteau half-filled with travel notes on Goergia. Luckily for you most of them have been destroyed.
-- A Hero of our Time (translated by Paul Foote)

And tomorrow, it may be, I shall die!... And there will not be left on earth one being who has understood me completely. Some will consider me worse, others, better, than I have been in reality... Some will say: 'he was a good fellow'; others: 'a villain.' And both epithets will be false. After all this, is life worth the trouble? And yet we live - out of curiosity! We expect something new... How absurd, and yet how vexatious!
-- A Hero of our Time

Ever since I lived and entered into action, fate has somehow led me to the climax of other people's dramas, as if no one could die, no one could despair without me. I have always been the essential character of the fifth act.
-- A Hero of our Time (translated by Philip Longworth)


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The selection of the above quotes and the writing of the accompanying notes was performed by the author David Paul Wagner.

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