“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.”

—  Mikhail Lermontov , book A Hero of Our Time

Referring to marriage
A Hero of Our Time (1840; rev. 1841)

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Mikhail Lermontov photo
Mikhail Lermontov 34
Russian writer, poet and painter 1814–1841

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