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Yes, man is mortal, but that would be only half the trouble. The worst of it is that he's sometimes unexpectedly mortal—there's the trick!

Mikhail Bulgakov

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Mikhail Bulgakov
Age: 48 †
Born: 1891
Born: May 15
Died: 1940
Died: March 10
Actor
Biographer
Journalist
Librettist
Novelist
Physician
Physician Writer
Playwright
Satirist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Kiev
Mikhael Bulgakov
Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov
Men
Trick
Mortals
Tricks
Trouble
Worst
Half
Sometimes
Unexpectedly
Would
Mortal

More quotes by Mikhail Bulgakov

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The cat, covered in dust and standing on its hind legs, bowed to Margarita. Round its neck it was now wearing a made-up white bow tie on an elastic band, with a pair of ladies’ mother-of-pearl binoculars hanging on a cord. It had also gilded its whiskers.
Mikhail Bulgakov
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Cowardice is the greatest sin.
Mikhail Bulgakov
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What's the use of dying in a ward surrounded by a lot of groaning and croaking incurables? Wouldn't it be much better to throw a party with that twenty-seven thousand and take poison and depart for the other world to the sound of violins, surrounded by lovely drunken girls and happy friends?
Mikhail Bulgakov
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Is that vodka? Margarita asked weakly. The cat jumped up in his seat with indignation. I beg pardon, my queen, he rasped, Would I ever allow myself to offer vodka to a lady? This is pure alcohol!
Mikhail Bulgakov
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The procurator studied the new arrival with avid, and slightly fearful eyes. It was the kind of look one gives someone one has heard of and thought a lot about, and whom one is meeting for the first time.
Mikhail Bulgakov
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Love leaped out in front of us like a murderer in an alley leaping out of nowhere, and struck us both at once. As lightning strikes, as a Finnish knife strikes! She, by the way, insisted afterwards that it wasn't so, that we had, of course, loved each other for a long, long time, without knowing each other, never having seen each other.
Mikhail Bulgakov
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I challenge you to a duel!” screamed the cat, sailing over their heads on the swinging chandelier.
Mikhail Bulgakov
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This twenty-year-old boy was distinguished from childhood by strange qualities, a dreamer and an eccentric. A girl fell in love with him, and he went and sold her to a brothel.
Mikhail Bulgakov
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Margarita was never short of money. She could buy whatever she liked. Her husband had plenty of interesting friends. Margarita never had to cook. Margarita knew nothing of the horrors of living in a shared flat. In short... was she happy? Not for a moment.
Mikhail Bulgakov
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Actually, I do happen to resemble a hallucination. Kindly note my silhouette in the moonlight. The cat climbed into the shaft of moonlight and wanted to keep talking but was asked to be quiet. Very well, I shall be silent, he replied, I shall be a silent hallucination.
Mikhail Bulgakov
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You pronounced your words as if you don’t acknowledge the shadows, or the evil either. Would you be so kind as to give a little thought to the question of what your good would be doing if evil did not exist, and how the earth would look if the shadows were to disappear from it?
Mikhail Bulgakov
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the hope that there she would manage to regain her happiness made her fearless
Mikhail Bulgakov
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Everything passes away-suffering,pain, blood, hunger,pestilence. The sword will pass away too, but the stars will remain when the shadows of our presence and our deeds have vanished from the Earth. There is no man who does not know that. Why, then, will we not turn our eyes toward the stars? Why?
Mikhail Bulgakov
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A dog's spirit dies hard.
Mikhail Bulgakov
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Nobody should be whipped. Remember that, once and for all. Neither man nor animal can be influenced by anything but suggestion.
Mikhail Bulgakov
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Manuscripts do not burn.
Mikhail Bulgakov
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Manuscripts don't burn.
Mikhail Bulgakov
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I hereby certify that the bearer of this note, Nikolai Ivanovich, spent the night in question at Satan's ball, having been lured there in a transportational capacity... Hella, put in parentheses! And write 'hog.' Signed- Behemoth.
Mikhail Bulgakov
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For some reason, cats are usually addressed familiarly, though no cat has ever drunk bruderschaft with anyone.
Mikhail Bulgakov
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Once in 1919, when I was traveling at night by train, I wrote a short story. In the town where the train stopped, I took the story to the publisher of the newspaper who published the story.
Mikhail Bulgakov