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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.

— Mikhail Lermontov A Hero of Our Time (1840)

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Spirituality

More quotes by Mikhail Lermontov

Women love only the men they don’t know.

Alone, as before, in the universe
Without hope and without love!..

The Demon (1830)

What would a woman not do to hurt a rival!

I want to reconcile myself with heaven,
I want to love, I want to pray,
I want to believe in good.

The Demon (1830)

In people's eyes I read
Pages of malice and sin.

The Prophet (1841)

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Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic Laby'rinth's single clue:
Worlds lie above, beyond its ken; what crosses it can ne'er be true.

Richard Francis Burton The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

In imitating the exemplary acts of a god or of a mythic hero, or simply by recounting their adventures, the man of an archaic society detaches himself from profane time and magically re-enters the Great Time, the sacred time.

Mircea Eliade Myths, Dreams and Mysteries (1967)

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

Thomas Jefferson

The superior man loves his soul; the inferior man loves his property.

Confucius

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Mikhail Lermontov (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.