Life According to Pechorin

Selected excerpts from A Hero of our Times, where the protagonist, Grigory Pechorin, offers his cynical views on life, love and power.

“ ... Yes, I have already passed that point in my spiritual life, when one searches only for happiness, with the heart feels the need to love someone strongly and passionately. Now I only want to be loved, and by many  at that; it even seems to me that I would be satisfied with one constant affection: a sad habit of the heart!”

“But I have figured you out, dear countess, beware! You want to give me a dose of my own medicine, to sting my pride – you will not succeed! And if you declare war on me, I will be merciless.”

“I was ready to love the whole world, but no one understood me. I learned to hate.”

“I spent the rest of the evening at Vera’s side and talked of old times to my heart’s content. What does she love me for so much - I really don’t know; particularly since she is the only woman who has completely understood me with all my petty weaknesses and wicked passions. Can evil possibly be so attractive?”

“... There is boundless delight in the possession of a young, barely unfolded soul! It is like a flower whose best fragrance emanates to meet the first ray of the sun. It should be plucked that very minute and after inhaling one’s fill of it, one should throw it away on the road: perchance, someone will pick it up! ... I look upon the sufferings and joys of others only in relation to myself as on the food sustaining the strength of my soul. I am no longer capable myself of frenzy under the influence of passion: ambition with me has been suppressed by circumstances, but it has manifested itself in another form, since ambition is nothing else than thirst for power, and my main pleasure - which is to subjugate to my will all that surrounds me, and to excite the emotions of love, devotion, and fear in relation to me - is it not the main sign and greatest triumph of power? To be to somebody the cause of sufferings and joys, without having any positive right to it - is this not the sweetest possible nourishment for our pride? And what is happiness? Sated pride. If I considered myself to be better and more powerful than anyone in the world, I would be happy; if everybody loved me, I would find in myself infinite sources of love. Evil begets evil: the first ache gives us an idea of the pleasure of tormenting another. The idea of evil cannot enter a person’s head without his wanting to apply it to reality: ideas are organic creations ...”

“I have an 

unhappy 

character: 

whether my upbringing made me so, or God made me so, I don’t know; I know only that if I am the cause of unhappiness to others, I am no less unhappy.”