Mikhail Lermontov

A childish feeling, I admit, but, 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 …

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

I would make any sacrifice but this; twenty times I can stake my life, even my honour, but my freedom I shall never sell. Why do I prize it so much? … What am I aiming at? Nothing, absolutely nothing.

I am like a mariner born and bred on board a buccaneer brig whose soul has become so inured to storm and strife that if cast ashore he would weary and languish no matter how alluring the shady groves and how bright the gentle sun.

Many a calm river begins as a turbulent waterfall, yet none hurtles and foams all the way to the sea.

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