My whole life has been merely a succession of miserable and unsuccessful denials of feelings or reason.
Mikhail LermontovWhen 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.
Mikhail LermontovEvil spawns evil. The first experience of torture gives an understanding of the pleasure in tormenting others.
Mikhail LermontovI have a congenital desire to contradict; my whole life is merely a chain of sad and unsuccessful contradictions to heart and mind. When faced with enthusiasm, I am seized by a midwinter freeze, and I suppose that frequent dealings with sluggish phlegmatics would have made a passionate dreamer.
Mikhail Lermontov