“The public of this country is so youthful, not to say simple-minded, that it cannot understand the meaning of a fable unless the moral is set forth at the end. Unable to see a joke, insensible to irony, it has, in a word, been badly brought up. It has not yet learned that in a decent book, as in decent society, open invective can have no place; that our present-day civilisation has invented a keener weapon, none the less deadly for being almost invisible, which, under the cloak of flattery, strikes with sure and irresistible effect.”

— Mikhail Lermontov, book A Hero of Our Time

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

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Mikhail Lermontov34

Russian writer, poet and painter 1814–1841

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