I only know that I feel tired, antiquated; I feel as though I had been living a long, long time.
IVAN TURGENEVTime, 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.
More Ivan Turgenev Quotes
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What’s terrible is that there’s nothing terrible, that the very essence of life is petty, uninteresting, and degradingly trite.
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You may live a long while with some people and be on friendly terms with them and never speak openly with them from your soul.
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.
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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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Who among us has the strength to oppose petty egoism, those petty good feelings, pity and remorse?
IVAN TURGENEV -
I share no man’s opinions; I have my own.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Love, I thought, is stronger than death or the fear of death. Only by it, by love, life holds together and advances.
IVAN TURGENEV -
I am a flirt: I have no heart: I have an actor’s nature.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Every man’s happiness is built on the unhappi-ness of another.
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Whatever man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself.
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Death’s an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew.
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The temerity to believe in nothing.
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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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We sit in the mud and reach for the stars.
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Even nightingales can’t be fed on fairy tales.
IVAN TURGENEV






