So long as one’s just dreaming about what to do, one can soar like an eagle and move mountains, it seems, but as soon as one starts doing it one gets worn out and tired.
IVAN TURGENEVIt was only the vulgarly mediocre that repelled her.
More Ivan Turgenev Quotes
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I was afraid of looking into my heart…afraid of thinking seriously about anything…I did not want to know whether I was loved, and I did not want to admit to myself that I was not loved.
IVAN TURGENEV -
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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Great God, grant that twice two be not four.
IVAN TURGENEV -
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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Take what you can yourself, and don’t let others get you into their hands; to belong to oneself, that is the whole thing in life.
IVAN TURGENEV -
I agree with no one’s opinion. I have some of my own.
IVAN TURGENEV -
I only know that I feel tired, antiquated; I feel as though I had been living a long, long time.
IVAN TURGENEV -
What a magnificent body, how I should like to see it on the dissecting table.
IVAN TURGENEV -
That’s what children are for—that their parents may not be bored.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Don’t force me into saying what I don’t want to say, and what I won’t say.
IVAN TURGENEV -
I look up to heaven only when I want to sneeze.
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Illness isn’t the only thing that spoils the appetite.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Nature cares nothing for logic, our human logic: she has her own, which we do not recognize and do not acknowledge until we are crushed under its wheel.
IVAN TURGENEV -
However much you knock at nature’s door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words.
IVAN TURGENEV -
What’s important is that twice two is four and all the rest’s nonsense.
IVAN TURGENEV -
It was only the vulgarly mediocre that repelled her.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Most people can’t understand how others can blow their noses differently than they do.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Sternly, remorselessly, fate guides each of us; only at the beginning, when we’re absorbed in details, in all sorts of nonsense, in ourselves, are we unaware of its harsh hand.
IVAN TURGENEV -
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!
IVAN TURGENEV -
Circumstances define us; they force us onto one road or another, and then they punish us for it.
IVAN TURGENEV -
A person who gets angry at his own illness is sure to overcome it.
IVAN TURGENEV -
I walked in the meadows of green grieving for my life.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man’s the workman in it.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Nothing is worse and more hurtful than a happiness that comes too late.
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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.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Love isn’t actually a feeling at all–it’s an illness, a certain condition of body and soul…. Usually it takes possession of someone without his permission, all of a sudden, against his will–just like cholera or a fever.
IVAN TURGENEV