Oh, gentle feelings, soft sounds, the goodness and the gradual stilling of a soul that has been moved; the melting happiness of the first tender, touching joys of love- where are you?
IVAN TURGENEVEven nightingales can’t be fed on fairy tales.
More Ivan Turgenev Quotes
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All human beings hang by a thread, an abyss may open under their feet at any moment, and yet they have to go and invent all sorts of difficulties for themselves and spoil their lives.
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Belonging to oneself–the whole essence of life lies in that.
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Go forward while you can, but if your strength fails you, sit down near the road and gaze without anger or envy at those who pass by. They don’t have far to go, either.
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It’s all romanticism, nonsense, rottenness, art.
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Time, as is well known, sometimes flies like a bird and sometimes crawls like a worm, but human beings are generally particularly happy when they don’t notice whether it’s passing quickly or slowly.
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We Russians have assigned ourselves no other task in life but the cultivation of our own personalities, and when we’re barely past childhood, we set to work to cultivate them, those unfortunate personalities.
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Circumstances define us; they force us onto one road or another, and then they punish us for it.
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One may speak about anything on earth with fire, with enthusiasm, with ecstasy, but one only speaks about oneself with avidity.
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A son is like a lopped off branch. As a falcon he comes when he wills and goes where he lists.
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The word tomorrow was invented for indecisive people and for children.
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Every man’s happiness is built on the unhappi-ness of another.
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The temerity to believe in nothing.
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Nature creates while destroying, and doesn’t care whether it creates or destroys as long as life isn’t extinguished, as long as death doesn’t lose its rights.
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We sit in the mud and reach for the stars.
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I only know that I feel tired, antiquated; I feel as though I had been living a long, long time.
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I don’t see why it’s impossible to express everything that’s on one’s mind.
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Behind me there are already so many memories Lots of memories, but no point in remembering them, and ahead of me a long, long road with nothing to aim for I just don’t want to go along it.
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That is what poetry can do. It speaks to us of what does not exist, which is not only better than what exists, but even more like the truth.
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If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.
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Significance is sweet.
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Ah, but in time the heat of noontide passes, and to it there succeed nightfall and dusk, with a return to the quiet fold where for the weary an the heavy-laden there waits sleep, sweet sleep.
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Even nightingales can’t be fed on fairy tales.
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Whatever man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself.
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In days of doubt, in days of dreary musings on my country’s fate, you alone are my comfort and support, oh great, powerful, righteous, and free Russian language!
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I look up to heaven only when I want to sneeze.
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In my case there was no first love. I began with the second.
IVAN TURGENEV