14 quotes
One should never spurn a penitent criminal: in his despair he may become twice as much a criminal as before.
A Hero of Our Time (1840)
Of two friends, one is always the slave of the other, although frequently neither acknowledges the fact to himself.
A Hero of Our Time (1840)
Happy people are ignoramuses and glory is nothing else but success, and to achieve it one only has to be cunning.
A Hero of Our Time (1840)
A strange thing, the human heart in general, and woman's heart in particular.
A Hero of Our Time (1840)
Women love only those whom they do not know!
A Hero of Our Time (1840)
Russian ladies, for the most part, cherish only Platonic love, without mingling any thought of matrimony with it; and Platonic love is exceedingly embarrassing.
A Hero of Our Time (1840)
O vanity! you are the lever by means of which Archimedes wished to lift the earth!
A Hero of Our Time (1840)
Many a calm river begins as a turbulent waterfall, yet none hurtles and foams all the way to the sea.
A Hero of Our Time (1840)
In simple hearts the feeling for the beauty and grandeur of nature is a hundred-fold stronger and more vivid than in us, ecstatic composers of narratives in words and on paper.
A Hero of Our Time (1840)
Women! Women! Who can understand them? Their smiles contradict their glances, their words promise and allure, but the tone of their voice repels.
A Hero of Our Time (1840)
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 once and will surely be again.
A Hero of Our Time (1840)
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.
A Hero of Our Time (1840)
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.
A Hero of Our Time (1840)
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.
A Hero of Our Time (1840)