Mikhail Bulgakov Quotes

WHEN A MAN WITH A LITTLE POINTED BEARD, robed in a white coat, came out into the waiting room of the renowned psychiatric clinic recently completed on a river bank outside Moscow, it was half-past one in the morning. Three hospital orderlies had their eyes glued to Ivan Nikolayevich, who was sitting on a couch.

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

Eh, Nikanor Ivanovich!' the unknown man exclaimed soulfully. 'What are official and unofficial persons? It all depends on your point of view on the subject. It's all fluctuating and relative, Nikanor Ivanovich. Today I'm a unofficial person, and tomorrow, lo and behold, I'm an official one! And it happens the other way round -oh, how it does! - Chapter 9

Eleven. I have waited for your awakening exactly an hour, for you asked me to come at ten. And here I am!" (85)

There is, if you don't mind my saying so, something sinister about men who avoid wine, games, the company of charming women, and good dinner-table conversation. People like that are either seriously ill or they secretly disdain their fellow men.

I don't have any special talents, just an ordinary desire to live like a human being.

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 ...

I believe!' Margarita whispered solemnly. 'I believe! Something will happen! It cannot not happen, because for what, indeed, has lifelong torment been sent to me? I admit that I lied and deceived and lived a secret life, hidden from people, but all the same the punishment for it cannot be so cruel…Something is bound to happen, because it cannot be that anything will go on for ever…

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?

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

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

They have read your novel,' Woland said, 'and they said only one thing, that, unfortunately, it is not finished. So I wanted to show you your hero. He has been sitting here for about two thousand years, sleeping, but, when the moon is full, he is tormented, as you see, by insomnia. And it torments not only him, but his faithful guardian, the dog.

If it is true that cowardice is the most grave vice, then the dog, at least, is not guilty of it. The only thing that brave creature ever feared was thunderstorms. But what can be done, the one who loves must share the fate of the one who is loved.

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!

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?

She had a passion for anyone who did something top-notch.

Why do smart people exist, if not to figure out convoluted problems?

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!

Man is mortal and, as has rightly been said, unexpectedly mortal.

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

Happiness is like good health: when you have it, you don't notice it. But as the years go by, oh, the memories, the memories of happiness past!

Don't be afraid, your majesty ... Don't be afraid, your majesty, the blood has long since drained away into the earth and grapes have grown on the spot.

To speak the truth is easy and pleasant.

Aren't there enough plays already? There are such lovely plays and so many of them. If you were to start playing them you couldn't get through them all in twenty years. Why do you want to write? It must be so upsetting!

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.

She had a look of suffering and I was struck less by her beauty than by the extraordinary loneliness in her eyes.

What would your good be doing if there were no evil, and what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it? After all, shadows are cast by objects and people. There is the shadow of my sword. But there are also shadows of trees and living creatures. Would you like to denude the earth of all the trees and all the living beings in order to satisfy your fantasy of rejoicing in the naked light?

Have just been run over by tram-car at Patriarch's Ponds funeral Friday three pm come. Berlioz.

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.

What is all this? Get him out of here, devil take me!" And that one, imagine, smiles and says: "Devil take you? That, in fact, can be done!" And - bang!

Once more and for the last time, the moon flashed above and broke into pieces, and then everything went black.

Too bad!' the feisty poet responded.
'Yes, too bad!' the stranger agreed, his eye flashing, and went on: 'But here is a question that is troubling me: if there is no God, then, one may ask, who governs human life and, in general, the whole order on earth?'
'Man governs it himself' Homeless angrily hastened to reply to this admittedly none-too-clear question.
'Pardon me,' the stranger responded gently, 'but in order to govern, one needs, after all, to have a precise plan for a certain, at least somewhat decent, length of time. Allow me to ask you, then, how can man govern, if he is not only deprived of the opportunity of making a plan for at least some ridiculously short period -well, say, a thousand years- but cannot even vouch for his own tomorrow?

I have just been cut in half by a streetcar at Patriarch's. Funeral Friday 3PM. Come. Berlioz

Tea is not vodka, it is impossible to drink it a lot

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

Altogether bad,' the host concluded. 'As you will, but there's something not nice hidden in men who avoid wine, games, the society of charming women, table talk. Such people are either gravely ill or secretly hate everybody around them. True, there may be exceptions. Among persons sitting down with me at the banqueting table, there have been on occasion some extraordinary scoundrels! ... And so, let me hear your business.

A dog's spirit dies hard.

I shall sit down,' replied the cat, sitting down, 'but I shall enter an objection with regard to your last. My speeches in no way resemble verbal muck, as you have been pleased to put it in the presence of a lady, but rather a sequence of tightly packed syllogisms, the merit of which would be appreciated by such connoisseurs as Sextus Empiricus, Martianus Capella, and, for all I know, Aristotle himself.'
Your king is in check,' said Woland.
Very well, very well,' responded the cat, and he began studying the chessboard through his opera glasses.
And so, donna,' Woland addressed Margarita, 'I present to you my retinue. This one who is playing the fool is the cat Behemoth ...

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

Obedient to constraint, I was compelled to submit

They were arguing about something very complex and important, and neither of them could refute the other. They did not agree with each other in anything, and that made their argument especially interesting and endless.

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.

Food, Ivan Arnoldovich, is a subtle thing. One must know how to eat, yet just think – most people don't know how to eat at all. One must not only know what to eat, but when and how.' (Philip Philipovich waved his fork meaningfully.) 'And what to say while you're eating. Yes, my dear sir. If you care about your digestion, my advice is – don't talk about bolshevism or medicine at table. And, God forbid – never read Soviet newspapers before dinner.' 'M'mm . . . But there are no other newspapers.' 'In that case don't read any at all. Do you know I once made thirty tests in my clinic. And what do you think? The patients who never read newspapers felt excellent. Those whom I specially made read Pravda all lost weight.

In short, you sensed that she was there, Moscow, right there, around the turn, and about to heave herself upon you and engulf you.

Yes, man is mortal, but that isn't so bad. What's bad is that sometimes he's unexpectedly mortal, that's the rub. And, in general, he can't even say in the morning what he'll be doing that very same night.

Ruin, therefore, is not caused by lavatories but it's something that starts in people's heads. So when these clowns start shouting "Stop the ruin!" - I laugh!' 'I swear to you, I find it laughable! Every one of them needs to hit himself on the back of the head and then when he has knocked all the hallucinations out of himself and gets on with sweeping out backyards - which is his real job - all this "ruin" will automatically disappear

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?

The most uncomplicated thing of all!' he replied. 'For someone well acquainted with the fifth dimension, it costs nothing to expand space to the desired proportions. I'll say more, respected lady - to devil knows what proportions! I, however,' Koroviev went on chattering, 'have known people who had no idea, not only of the fifth dimension, but generally of anything at all, and who nevertheless performed absolute wonders in expanding their space. Thus, for instance, one city-dweller, as I've been told, having obtained a three-room apartment on Zemlyanoy Val, transformed it instantly, without any fifth dimension or other things that addle the brain, into a four-room apartment by dividing one room in half with a partition.

This was at dusk, in mid-October. And she left. I lay down on the sofa and fell asleep without turning on the light. I was awakened by the feeling that the octopus was there. Groping in the dark, I barely managed to turn on the light. My pocket watch showed two o'clock in the morning. I was falling ill when I went to bed, and I woke up sick. It suddenly seemed to me that the autumn darkness would push through the glass and pour into the room, and I would drown in it as in ink.

The nauseating liquid choked the dog's breathing and his head began to spin, then his legs collapsed and he seemed to be moving sideways. This is it, he thought dreamily as he collapsed on to the sharp slivers of glass. Goodbye, Moscow! I shan't see Chichkin or the proletarians or Cracow sausages again. I'm going to the heaven for long-suffering dogs. You butchers – why did you have to do this to me? With that he finally collapsed on to his back and passed out." Chapter 2

I'll go to bed, forget myself in sleep.

All the words he used in the beginning were gutter words. He heard them and stored them in his brain. Now, as I walk in the street, I look at dogs with secret horror. WHo knows what is hidden in their heads?

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.

Listen to the silence,' said Margarita to the master, the sand rustling under her bare feet. 'Listen to the silence and enjoy it. Here is the peace that you never knew in your lifetime. Look, there is your home for eternity, which is your reward. I can already see a Venetian window and a climbing vine which grows right up to the roof. It's your home, your home for ever. In the evenings people will come to see you- people who interest you, people who will never upset you. They will play to you and sing to you and you will see how beautiful the room is by candlelight. You shall go to sleep with your dirty old cap on, you shall go to sleep with a smile on your lips.

Kindly consider the question: what would your good do if evil did not exist, and what would the
earth look like if shadows disappeared from it? Shadows are cast by objects and people. Here is the
shadow of my sword. Trees and living beings also have shadows. Do you want to skin the whole
earth, tearing all the trees and living things off it, because of your fantasy of enjoying bare light?
You're a fool.

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

The buckets emptied quickly, and men from different squads took turns bringing water from the gully that lay towards the city, where, in the feeble shade of emaciated mulberries, a muddy stream lived out its last days in the diabolical heat.

But The Master and Margarita is true to the broader sense of the novel as a freely developing form embodied in the works of Dostoevsky and Gogol, of Swift and Sterne, of Cervantes, Rabelais and Apuleius.

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?

She had a passion for all people who did anything to perfection.

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

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!

And now tell me, why is it that you use me words "good people" all the time? Do you call everyone that, or what?
- Everyone, - the prisoner replied. - There are no evil people in the world.

(- А теперь скажи мне, что это ты все время употребляешь слова добрые
люди"? Ты всех, что ли, так называешь?
- Всех, - ответил арестант, - злых людей нет на свете.)

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.

The rule apparently is – once a social revolution takes place there's
no need to stoke the boiler. But I ask you: why, when this whole business started, should everybody suddenly start clumping up and down the marble staircase in dirty galoshes and felt boots? Why must we now keep our galoshes under lock and key? And put a soldier on guard over them to prevent them from being stolen? Why has the carpet been removed from the front staircase? Did Marx forbid people to keep their staircases carpeted? Did Karl Marx say anywhere
that the front door of No. 2 Kalabukhov House in Prechistenka Street must be boarded up so that people have to go round and come in by the back door? What good does it do anybody? Why can't the proletarians leave their galoshes downstairs instead of dirtying the staircase?'
'But the proletarians don't have any galoshes, Philip Philipovich,' stammered the doctor.

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.

Don't be afraid, Queen, the blood has long run down into the earth. And on the spot where it was spilled, grapevines are growing today.

– But here is a question that is troubling me: if there is no God, then, one may ask, who governs human life and, in general, the whole order of things on earth?
– Man governs it himself, – Homeless angrily hastened to reply to this admittedly none-too-clear question.
– Pardon me, – the stranger responded gently, – but in order to govern, one needs, after all, to have a precise plan for a certain, at least somewhat decent, length of time. Allow me to ask you, then, how can man govern, if he is not only deprived of the opportunity of making a plan for at least some ridiculously short period, well, say, a thousand years , but cannot even vouch for his own tomorrow? And in fact, – here the stranger turned to Berlioz, – imagine that you, for instance, start governing, giving orders to others and yourself, generally, so to speak, acquire a taste for it, and suddenly you get ...hem ... hem ... lung cancer ... – here the foreigner smiled sweetly, and if the thought of lung cancer gave him pleasure - yes, cancer - narrowing his eyes like a cat, he repeated the sonorous word - and so your governing is over! You are no longer interested in anyone's fate but your own. Your family starts lying to you. Feeling that something is wrong, you rush to learned doctors, then to quacks, and sometimes to fortune-tellers as well. Like the first, so the second and third are completely senseless, as you understand. And it all ends tragically: a man who still recently thought he was gov

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.

It's nice to hold on to a holiday midnight a little longer than usual

He who never hurries is always on time.

All will be as it should; that is how the world is made.

And a fact is the most stubborn thing in the world.

Remove the document - and you remove the man.

The whole horror of the situation is that he now has a human heart, not a dog's heart. And about the rottenest heart in all creation!

Great and terrible was the year of Our Lord 1918, of the Revolution the second. Its summer abundant with warmth and sun, its winter and snow, highest in its heaven stood two stars: the shepherds' star, eventide Venus; and Mars- quivering, red. But in days of blood and of peace the years fly like an arrow and the thick frost of a hoary white December, season of Christmas trees, Santa Claus, joy and glittering snow, overtook the young Turbins unawares. For the reigning head of the family, their adored mother, was no longer with them.

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!

The movies are a woman's only solace in life.

His swearing is methodical, continuous, and apparently entirely senseless.

Do I express my thoughts lucidly?
I think I do.
What is my life? An absurdity.

And at midnight there came an apparition in hell. A handsome dark-eyed man with a dagger-like beard, in a tailcoat, stepped onto the veranda and cast a regal glance over his domain. They used to say, the mystics used to say, that there was a time when the handsome man wore not a tailcoat but a wide leather belt with pistol butts sticking out from it, and his raven hair was tied with scarlet silk, and under his command a brig sailed the Caribbean under a black death flag with a skull and crossbones.
But no, no! The seductive mystics are lying, there are no Caribbean Seas in the world, no desperate freebooters to sail them, no corvette chases after them, no cannon smoke drifts across the waves. There is nothing, and there was nothing! There is that sickly linden over there, there is the cast-iron fence, and the boulevard beyond it…And the ice is melting in the bowl, and at the next table you see someone's bloodshot, bovine eyes, and you're afraid, afraid…Oh, gods, my gods, poison, bring me poison!...

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?

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

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

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

She gave a little jump and hung in the air a little way above the rug, then she slowly began to be drawn downwards and dropped ..

One can find time for everything if one is never in a hurry,' explained his host didactically. Chapter 3

Why bother to learn to read when you can smell meat a mile away? Chapter 2

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.

I, the unfortunate Doctor Polyakov, who became addicted to morphine in February of this year, warn anyone who may suffer the same fate not to attempt to replace morphine with cocaine. Cocaine is a most foul and insidious poison. Yesterday Anna barely managed to revive me with camphor injections and today I am half dead.

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

The trouble is,' the bound man went on, not stopped by anyone, 'that you are too closed off
and have definitively lost faith in people. You must agree, one can't place all one's affection in a
dog. Your life is impoverished, Hegemon.' And here the speaker allowed himself to smile.

That's really bad," concluded the host, "say what you will, but there's something evil lurking in men who avoid wine, games, the society of delightful women, table talk. Such people are either gravely ill or secretly hate those around them. True, exceptions are possible. Among those who have sat down with me at the banqueting table, there have sometimes been some astonishing scoundrels! And so, I'm listening to why you're here.

For some a prologue, for some an epilogue.

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.

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

If you've been exiled, why don't you send me word of yourself? People do send word. Have you stopped loving me? No, for some reason I don't believe that. It means you were exiled and died ... Release me, then, I beg you, give me freedom to live, finally, to breathe the air! ... ' Margarita Nikolaevna answered for him herself: 'You are free ... am I holding you?' Then she objected to him: 'No, what kind of answer is that? No, go from my memory, then I'll be free ...

Cowardice is the greatest sin.

Gods, my gods! How sad the earth is at eventide! How mysterious are the mists over the swamps. Anyone who has wandered in these mists, who has suffered a great deal before death, or flown above the earth, bearing a burden beyond his strength knows this. Someone who is exhausted knows this. And without regret he forsakes the mists of the earth, its swamps and rivers, and sinks into the arms of death with a light heart knowing that death alone . . .

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.

The brick is neither here nor there,' interrupted the stranger in an imposing fashion, 'it never merely falls on someone's head from out of nowhere. In your case, I can assure you that a brick poses no threat whatsoever. You will die another kind of death.
'And you know just what that will be?' queried Berlioz with perfectly understandable irony, letting himself be drawn into a truly absurd conversation. 'And can you tell me what that is?'
'Gladly,' replied the stranger. He took Berlioz's measure as if intending to make him a suit and muttered something through his teeth that sounded like 'One, two.. Mercury in the Second House ... the moon has set ... six-misfortune ... evening-seven ... ' Then he announced loudly and joyously, 'Your head will be cut off!