Top 180 Mikhail Bulgakov Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “The sentries marched back and forth, guarding their tower, for without knowing it, man had made towers, alarm-bells and weapons for one purpose only – to guard the peace of his hearth and home. For this he goes to war, which if the truth be known, is the only cause for which anyone ought to fight.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

152. “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 living things and people.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

153. “But would you kindly ponder this question: What would your good do if evil didn’t exist?”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

154. “This second one, evidently a lefty, socked the administrator on the other ear. In response there was another roll of thunder in the sky, and rain poured down on the wooden roof of the toilet.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

155. “Warm apricot soda.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

156. “No, you mustn’t give way. It’s simply that you don’t know what the theater’s like. There are some complicated mechanisms in this world but the theater is the most complicated of them all...”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

157. “A quarter of an hour later, Ruikhin sat in complete solitude, hunched over his bream, drinking glass after glass, understanding and recognizing that it was no longer possible to set anything right in his life, that it was only possible to forget.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

158. “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 ones affection in a dog. Your life is impoverished, Hegemon.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

159. “So what if I had to eat out of dustbins? At least it was an honest living.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

160. “For an addict there is one pleasure of which no one can deprive him – his ability to spend his time in absolute solitude. And solitude means deep, significant thought; it means, calm, contemplation – and wisdom. The night flows on, black and silent. Somewhere out there is the bare leafless forest, beyond it the river, the chill air of autumn. Far away lies the strife-torn, restless city of Moscow. Nothing concerns me, I need nothing and there is nowhere for me to go.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

161. “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!”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

162. “I had to be calm and cautious yet at the same time utterly decisive and unfaltering.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

163. “However, one theory is as good as another.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

164. “Everything was in a mess in the Oblonskys.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

165. “Hell, why should I have to find a pretext for every single thing I do?”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

166. “Who is official and who is unofficial these days? It all depends on your point of view. It’s all so vague and changeable, Nikanor Ivanovich. Today I’m unofficial, tomorrow, hey presto! I’m official! Or maybe vice-versa – who knows?”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

167. “My previous notes must sound somewhat hysterical. In fact there is nothing particularly unusual or alarming about my condition. It does not in the least affect my capacity to work.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

168. “I can’t escape from here. Not because it’s too high but because I’ve nowhere to go.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

169. “Your interlocutor was at Pilate’s, and had breakfast with Kant, and now he’s visiting Moscow.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

170. “No, even when I’m on the verge of sleep I shall never again boast that nothing can surprise me. Now that this year is past, the next year will be just as full of surprises as the first. One never stops learning.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

171. “Oh, thrice romantic Master, don’t you want to stroll with your beloved by day under the cherries bursting into bloom, and int he evenings listen to Schubert’s music? Won’t it be pleasant for you to write with a quill by candlelight? Don’t you want to sit, like Faust, over a retort, hoping to create a new homunculus?”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

172. “The cat was untied and returned to its owner, having tasted grief, it’s true, and having learned by experience the meaning of error and slander.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

173. “All of this happened very quickly, but not suddenly, and not before the appearance of certain omens.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

174. “She felt something warm and velvety by her leg. It was Behemoth.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

175. “The night flowed on. During its second half the whole arc of the sky, the curtain that God had drawn across the world, was covered with stars.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

176. “L’amour surgit devant nous comme surgit de terre l’assassin au coin d’une ruelle obscure, et nous frappa tous deux d’un coup. Ainsi frappe la foudre, ainsi frappe le poignard !”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

177. “She only came through that gate once a day, but my heart would beat faster from at least ten false alarms every morning. Then when her time came and the hands were pointing to noon, my heart went on thumping until her shoes with their black patent-leather straps and steel buckles drew level, almost soundlessly, with my basement window.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

178. “To die of thirst is a heavenly, blissful death compared with the craving for morphine. The feeling must be something like that of a man buried alive, clawing at the skin on his chest in the effort to catch the last tiny bubbles of air in his coffin, or of a heretic at the stake, groaning and writhing as the first tongues of flame lick at his feet.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

179. “But there were other victims as well, even after Woland left the capital, and these victims, sadly enough, were black cats.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

180. “Twelve thousand moons for one moon long ago, isn’t that too much?”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

181. “The weary man knows it. And without regret he leaves the mists of the earth, its swamps and rivers, with a light heart he gives himself into the hands of death, knowing that she alone can bring him peace.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

182. “Give the fathers twenty-five roubles, and they’ll say a mass for the devil himself.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

183. “Night was outdistancing the cavalcade, it sowed itself over them from above, casting white specks of stars here and there in the saddened sky. Night thickened, flew alongside, caught at the riders’ cloaks and, tearing them from their shoulders, exposed the deceptions.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

184. “The rain is streaming down and shrouding the outside world from my sight. Long may it do so. I don’t need the world any more, and no one in the world needs me. I was in the clinic while the shooting and the coup d’etat took place, but the idea of abandoning the cure had begun insidiously to grow in my mind even before the fighting started in the streets of Moscow. I have the morphine to thank for making me brave. I’m not afraid of rifle fire now.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

185. “Woland silently raised his class and clinked with Margarita. Margarita drank obediently, thinking that this alcohol would be the end of her. But nothing bad happened.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

186. “The right place to live is behind cream-coloured blinds.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

187. “Make the wall 2.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

188. “Miserable, I paced up and down the twilit study. When I came up to the lamp I caught sight of the reflection of my pale face and of the light of the lamp in the window set against the boundless darkness of the fields. ‘I’m like Dmitry the Pretender – nothing but a sham,’ I thought stupidly and sat down at the table again.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

189. “Where else can such wrecks as you and I find help except from the supernatural?”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

190. “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,4 and, for all I know, Aristotle himself.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

191. “The procurator studied the newcomer with greedy and slightly frightened eyes. So one looks at a man of whom one has heard a great deal, of whom one has been thinking, and who finally appears.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

192. “A man only has to be chased with firearms for him to turn into a cunning wolf: in place of his weak, and in really desperate situations useless intellect, the wisdom of animal instinct will suddenly take over.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

193. “Who ever told you there is no such thing in the world as real, true, everlasting love? May the liar have his despicable tongue cut out!”

— Mikhail Bulgakov

194. “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.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov