Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov. A hero of our time (№ 713)

Such has been my fate since childhood. All read on my face a sign of bad feelings, which were not; but they assumed - and they were born. I was modest -- I was accused of slyness: I became secretive. I deeply felt the good and evil; I will not be caressed, all offended: I was vindictive; I was gloomy - other children merry and talkative; I felt above them, I put below. I became envious. I was ready to love the whole world, - to me no one understood and I learned to hate. My colourless youth leaked in fight against itself and light; my best feelings, fearing ridicule, I buried in my heart: they died there. I was telling the truth - I was not believed: I began to deceive; to know well the light and the springs of society, I became skilled in the science of life and seen others to be happy using the gift of all the advantages which I so tirelessly sought. And then in my chest born of despair - not the despair that treat the barrel of a gun, but a cold, impotent despair, covered with courtesy and good-natured smile. I became a moral cripple; one half of my soul did not exist, it dried up, evaporated, died, I cut it off and threw it, then another moved and lived here for everybody, and nobody noticed because nobody knew about the existence of the lost of half of it.