Mikhail Bulgakov quotes:

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  • Is that vodka?" Margarita asked weakly. The cat jumped up in his seat with indignation. "I beg pardon, my queen," he rasped, "Would I ever allow myself to offer vodka to a lady? This is pure alcohol!

  • You're not Dostoevsky,' said the citizeness, who was getting muddled by Koroviev. Well, who knows, who knows,' he replied. 'Dostoevsky's dead,' said the citizeness, but somehow not very confidently. 'I protest!' Behemoth exclaimed hotly. 'Dostoevsky is immortal!

  • Everyone listened to this amusing narrative with great interest, and the moment that Behemoth concluded it, they all shouted in unison: 'Lies!

  • I hereby certify that the bearer of this note, Nikolai Ivanovich, spent the night in question at Satan's ball, having been lured there in a transportational capacity... Hella, put in parentheses! And write 'hog.' Signed- Behemoth.

  • Margarita was never short of money. She could buy whatever she liked. Her husband had plenty of interesting friends. Margarita never had to cook. Margarita knew nothing of the horrors of living in a shared flat. In short... was she happy? Not for a moment.

  • The cat, covered in dust and standing on its hind legs, bowed to Margarita. Round its neck it was now wearing a made-up white bow tie on an elastic band, with a pair of ladies' mother-of-pearl binoculars hanging on a cord. It had also gilded its whiskers."

  • Follow me, reader! Who told you that there is no true, faithful, eternal love in this world! May the liar's vile tongue be cut out! Follow me, my reader, and me alone, and I will show you such a love!

  • I had the pleasure of meeting that young man at the Patriarch's Ponds. He almost drove me mad myself, proving to me that I don't exist. But you do believe that it is really I?

  • He's clever,' thought Ivan,' I must admit there are some smart people even among the intelligentsia

  • Foreign visitors . . . how impressed you all are with foreign visitors! But they come in many different varieties.

  • Once in 1919, when I was traveling at night by train, I wrote a short story. In the town where the train stopped, I took the story to the publisher of the newspaper who published the story.

  • Who ever told you there is no such thing in the world as real, true, everlasting love? May the liar have his despicable tongue cut out!

  • It must be added that from his first words the foreigner made a repellent impression on the poet, but Berlioz rather liked him - that is, not liked but . . . how to put it . . . was interested, or whatever.

  • My writing is progressing slowly, but at least it's moving forward. I'm sure that's the case. The only problem is that I'm never absolutely certain that what I've written is any good.

  • Not causing trouble, not touching anything, fixing the primus.

  • "We speak different languages, as usual," responded Woland, "but this does not change the things we speak about. Well?..."

  • Well, now,' the latter replied pensively, 'they're people like any other people...they love money, but that has always been so...Mankind loves money, whatever it's made of -leather, paper, bronze, gold. Well, they're light-minded...well, what of it...mercy sometimes knocks at their hearts...ordinary people...In general, reminiscent of the former ones...only the housing problem has corrupted them...' Chapter 12"

  • Don't be afraid, Queen ... don't be afraid, Queen, the blood has long since gone into the earth. And where it was spilled, grapevines are already growing.

  • In the first few seconds an aching sadness wrenched his heart, but it soon gave way to a feeling of sweet disquiet, the excitement of gypsy wanderlust

  • Not fooling around, not bothering nobody, just sitting here mending the Primus," said the cat with a hostile frown, "and, moreover, I consider it my duty to warn you that the cat is an ancient, inviolable animal.

  • Everything passes away-suffering,pain, blood, hunger,pestilence. The sword will pass away too, but the stars will remain when the shadows of our presence and our deeds have vanished from the Earth. There is no man who does not know that. Why, then, will we not turn our eyes toward the stars? Why?

  • You were right," said the Master impressed by the neatness of Korovyov's work, "when you said: no documents, no person. So that means I don't exist since I don't have any documents.

  • Nobody should be whipped. Remember that, once and for all. Neither man nor animal can be influenced by anything but suggestion.

  • But what can be done, the one who loves must share the fate of the one he loves.

  • Most bad," the host concluded. "If you ask me, something sinister lurks in men who avoid wine, games, the company of lovely women, and dinnertime conversation. Such people are either gravely ill or secretly detest everyone around them.

  • Clever people have been pointing out for a long time that happiness is like good health: when it's there, you don't notice it. But when the years have passed, how you do remember happiness, oh, how you do remember it!

  • What point is there in dying in a ward, listening to the moans and rasps of the terminally ill? Wouldn't it be better to spend the twenty-seven thousand on a banquet, then, after taking poison, depart for the other world to the sound of violins, surrounded by intoxicated beautiful women and dashing friends~?

  • A dog's spirit dies hard.

  • Allow me to inquire how man can control his own affairs when he is not only incapable of compiling a plan for some laughably short term such as, say, a thousand years, but cannot even predict what will happen to him tomorrow?

  • and a fact is the most stubborn thing in the world.

  • Azazello begged her not to worry, assuring her that he had seen not only naked women but also women with their skin flayed clean off

  • But worse things were about to be found in the bedroom: on the jeweller's wife's ottoman, in a casual pose, sprawled a third party- namely, a black cat of uncanny size, with a glass of vodka in one paw and a fork, on which he had managed to spear a pickled mushroom, in the other. , The Master and Magarita

  • But would you kindly ponder this question: What would your good do if evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared? After all, shadows are cast by things and people. Here is the shadow of my sword. But shadows also come from trees and living beings. Do you want to strip the earth of all trees and living things just because of your fantasy of enjoying naked light? You're stupid.

  • Cowardice is the greatest sin.

  • Cowardice is the most terrible of vices.

  • Cowardice was undoubtedly one of the most terrible vices - thus spoke Yeshua Ha-Nozri. 'No, philosopher, I disagree with you: it is the most terrible vice!

  • Difficult folk, these women!

  • Everything will turn out right, the world is built on that.

  • For some reason, cats are usually addressed familiarly, though no cat has ever drunk bruderschaft with anyone.

  • he was coming to understand he could not come to rectify anything in his life, only forget.

  • He who never hurries is always on time.

  • How sad, ye Gods, how sad the world is at evening, how mysterious the mists over the swamps! You will know it when you have wandered astray in those mists, when you have suffered greatly before dying, when you have walked through the world carrying an unbearable burden. You know it two when you are weary and ready to leave this earth without regret; its mists; its swamps and its rivers; ready to give yourself into the arms of death with a light heart, knowing that death alone can comfort you.

  • I challenge you to a duel!" screamed the cat, sailing over their heads on the swinging chandelier.

  • I suppose that in no educational institution can one become an educated person.

  • I wouldn't like to meet you when you've got a revolver," said Margarita with a coquettish look at Azazello. She had a passion for people who did things well.

  • If it is true that cowardice is the most grave vice, then the dog, at least, is not guilty of it.

  • In order to be in control, you have to have a definite plan for at least a reasonable period of time. So how, may I ask, can man be in control if he can't even draw up a plan for a ridiculously short period of time, say, a thousand years, and is, moreover, unable to ensure his own safety for even the next day?

  • just like a murderer jumps of nowhere in an ally, love jumped out in front of us and struck us both at once

  • Literature has become my life.

  • Love leaped out in front of us like a murderer in an alley leaping out of nowhere, and struck us both at once. As lightning strikes, as a Finnish knife strikes! She, by the way, insisted afterwards that it wasn't so, that we had, of course, loved each other for a long, long time, without knowing each other, never having seen each other"¦

  • Manuscripts do not burn.

  • Manuscripts don't burn.

  • Never ask for anything! Never for anything, and especially from those who are stronger than you. They'll make the offer themselves, and give everything themselves.

  • No documents, no person.

  • No one's fate is of any interest to you except your own.

  • Obedient to constraint, I was compelled to submit

  • Once upon a time there was a lady. She had no children, and no happiness either. And at first she cried for a long time, but then she became wicked...

  • Second freshness - that's what is nonsense! There is only one freshness - the first - and it is also the last. And if sturgeon is of the second freshness, that means it is simply rotten.

  • The cat, covered in dust and standing on its hind legs, bowed to Margarita. Round its neck it was now wearing a made-up white bow tie on an elastic band, with a pair of ladies' mother-of-pearl binoculars hanging on a cord. It had also gilded its whiskers.

  • The darkness that had come in from the Mediterranean covered the city so detested by the procurator...

  • the hope that there she would manage to regain her happiness made her fearless

  • The most amazing combinations can result if you shuffle the pack enough.

  • The procurator studied the new arrival with avid, and slightly fearful eyes. It was the kind of look one gives someone one has heard of and thought a lot about, and whom one is meeting for the first time.

  • The tongue can conceal the truth, but the eyes never! You're asked an unexpected question, you don't even flinch, it takes just a second to get yourself under control, you know just what you have to say to hide the truth, and you speak very convincingly, and nothing in your face twitches to give you away. But the truth, alas, has been disturbed by the question, and it rises up from the depths of your soul to flicker in your eyes and all is lost.

  • There is no greater misfortune in the world than the loss of reason.

  • This twenty-year-old boy was distinguished from childhood by strange qualities, a dreamer and an eccentric. A girl fell in love with him, and he went and sold her to a brothel...

  • To struggle against censorship, whatever its nature, and whatever the power under which it exists, is my duty as a writer, as are calls for freedom of the press. I am a passionate supporter of that freedom, and I consider that if any writer were to imagine that he could prove he didn't need that freedom, then he would be like a fish affirming in public that it didn't need water.

  • Well, as everyone knows, once witchcraft gets started, there's no stopping it.

  • What would your good do if evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared?

  • What's the use of dying in a ward surrounded by a lot of groaning and croaking incurables? Wouldn't it be much better to throw a party with that twenty-seven thousand and take poison and depart for the other world to the sound of violins, surrounded by lovely drunken girls and happy friends?

  • You are not Dostoevsky,' said the woman... 'You never can tell...' he answered. 'Dostoevsky is dead,' the woman said, a bit uncertainly. 'I protest!' he said with heat, 'Dostoevsky is immortal!

  • You pronounced your words as if you don't acknowledge the shadows, or the evil either. Would you be so kind as to give a little thought to the question of what your good would be doing if evil did not exist, and how the earth would look if the shadows were to disappear from it?

  • You should never ask anyone for anything. Never- and especially from those who are more powerful than yourself.

  • Actually, I do happen to resemble a hallucination. Kindly note my silhouette in the moonlight." The cat climbed into the shaft of moonlight and wanted to keep talking but was asked to be quiet. "Very well, I shall be silent," he replied, "I shall be a silent hallucination.

  • To speak the truth is easy and pleasant.

  • Why try to pursue what is completed?

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