Mikhail Bulgakov famous quotes

Cowardice is the most terrible of vices.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Vices #Cowardice #Terrible

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!
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Liars #Cutting #Faithful

The tongue may hide the truth but the eyes—never!
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Eye #May #Tongue

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?
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Stars #Pain #Eye

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.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Stupid #Light #Evil

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.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Struggle #Water #Needs

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

#Powerful #Power #Should

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

#Evil #Shadow #Looks

No one's fate is of any interest to you except your own.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Fate #Interest

Everything will turn out right, the world is built on that.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#World #Turns

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!
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Queens #Cat #Alcohol

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.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Cat #Talking #Hallucinations

Kindness. The only possible method when dealing with a living creature. You'll get nowhere with an animal if you use terror, no matter what its level of development may be. That I have maintained, do maintain and always will maintain. People who think you can use terror are quite wrong. No, no, terror is useless, whatever its colour – white, red or even brown! Terror completely paralyses the nervous system.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Kindness #Thinking #Animal

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.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Eye #Giving #Soul

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
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Worry #Skins #Naked

Punch a man on the nose, kick an old man downstairs, shoot somebody or any old thing like that, that’s my job. But argue with women in love—no thank you!
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Jobs #Men #Old Things

I challenge you to a duel!” screamed the cat, sailing over their heads on the swinging chandelier.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Cat #Sailing #Challenges

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

#Fate #Done #Share

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

#Allies #Murderer

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.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Queens #Blood #Long

Manuscripts do not burn.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

To speak the truth is easy and pleasant.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Speak #Truth Is #Easy

Difficult folk, these women!
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Women #Difficult #Folks

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.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Wine #Men #Games

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?
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Men #Order #Years

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.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Night #Towns #Stories

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...
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Children #Long #Once Upon A Time

Literature has become my life.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Literature

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!
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Heat #Said #Immortal

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

#Cities #Darkness #Covered

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

#Stopping #Witchcraft #Wells

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.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Cat #Animal #Sitting

A dog's spirit dies hard.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Dog #Spirit

and a fact is the most stubborn thing in the world.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Facts #Stubborn #World

Not causing trouble, not touching anything, fixing the primus.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Touching #Fixing #Trouble

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!
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Behemoth #Said #Immortal

There's only one degree of freshness — the first, which makes it also the last
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Firsts #Degrees #Lasts

Remove the document—and you remove the man.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Men #Bureaucracy

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

#Men #Animal #Suggestions

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

#Forget #Rectify

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

#Dog #Vices #Guilty

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...
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Girl #Boys #Years

Obedient to constraint, I was compelled to submit
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Submit #Constraints

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.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Writing #Night #Balls

Yes, man is mortal, but that would be only half the trouble. The worst of it is that he's sometimes unexpectedly mortal—there's the trick!
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Men #Half #Would Be

the hope that there she would manage to regain her happiness made her fearless
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Fearless #Made #Manage

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?
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Evil #Giving #Shadow

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.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Firsts #Poet #Made

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…
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Knives #Knowing #Long

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.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Regret #Heart #Two

The most amazing combinations can result if you shuffle the pack enough.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Most Amazing #Enough #Combination

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?
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Girl #Party #Other Worlds

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

#Visitors #Different #Variety

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.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Mean #Lasts #Firsts

Why try to pursue what is completed?
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Trying #Pursue

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.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Mean #Said #Masters

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.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Moving #Writing #Progress

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
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Party #Cat #Glasses

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
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Sweet #Sadness #Heart

Cowardice is the greatest sin.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Sin #Cowardice

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

#Cat #Drunk #Reason

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!
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Vices #Philosopher #Cowardice

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?
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Believe #Men #Mad

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.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Eye #Avid #Giving

Manuscripts don't burn.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

No documents, no person.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Persons

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

#Clever #Smart #People

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.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Husband #Interesting #Horror

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!
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Liars #Real #Cutting

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.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Mother #Cat #Dust

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

#Different #Usual #Doe

There is no greater misfortune in the world than the loss of reason.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Loss #World #Reason

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.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Passion #People #Looks

I suppose that in no educational institution can one become an educated person.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Educational #Institutions #Educated

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.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov

#Giving #Stronger #Offers