Lucky’s Reviews > A Hero of Our Time > Status Update

In no one is the desire to be loved so constant as in you; in no one is evil so attractive; in no one's glance is there such a promise of bliss; nobody knows better than you how to use his advantages, and no one else can be so genuinely unhappy as you, because nobody tries as hard as you to convince himself of the contrary.

When I think of imminent and possible death, I think only of myself;

Some think of me worse, others better, than I really am. Some will say: he was a good fellow; others: he was a scoundrel. And both will be wrong. Is it worth the trouble to live after this? And yet you go on living—out of curiosity, in expectation of something
new. . . . How ludicrous and how vexatious!

My love has never made anyone happy, for I have never sacrificed anything for those I loved; I have loved only for myself, for my own pleasure; I have striven only to satisfy a strange craving of the heart, greedily absorbing their emotions, their tenderness, their joys and sufferings—and have never been sated.

No matter how passionately I might love a woman it is farewell to love if she as much as hints at my marrying her. My heart turns to stone, and nothing can warm it again. I would make any sacrifice but this; twenty times I can stake my life, even my honour, but my freedom I shall never sell.

All the way home she talked and laughed incessantly. But she was merely suffering a fit of nerves and would spend a sleepless night weeping. The very thought gives me infinite pleasure; there are moments when I understand the Vampire. . . . And yet I have the reputation of being a good fellow and try to live up to it!

Love, like fire, dies out without fuel. Perhaps jealousy will succeed where my pleadings have failed.

Can it be, thought I, that my sole mission on earth is to destroy the hopes of others? Ever since I began to live and act, fate has somehow associated me with the denouement of other people's tragedies, as if without me no one could either die or give way to despair! I have been the inevitable fifth-act character, involuntarily playing the detestable role of the hangman or the traitor.

Everyone read signs of non-existent evil traits in my features. But since they were expected to be there, they did make their appearance.

"I beg of you quite earnestly—if you should ever take it into your mind to speak ill of me, take a knife instead and kill me. I believe you would not find it too difficult to do."
"Do I look like a murderer?"
"You are worse. . . . "