Quote#Dreams
I do not love you; the former dream
Quote byMikhail Lermontov · 1814–1841
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: "I do not love you..." (1831).
English (original)
I do not love you; the former dream Of passions and torments has passed by; But your image in my soul Is still alive, although it is powerless; Although I abandon myself to other dreams, I still cannot forget it; So an abandoned temple is still a temple, A dethroned idol — still a god!
— Mikhail Lermontov
More from Mikhail Lermontov
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O vanity! you are the lever by means of which Archimedes wished to lift the earth!
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.
Many a calm river begins as a turbulent waterfall, yet none hurtles and foams all the way to the sea.
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 …