I’m through with Tolstoy. He has ceased to exist for me…. If I eat a bowl of soup and like it, I know by that fact alone and with absolute certainty that Tolstoy will find it bad, and vice versa.
IVAN TURGENEVDeath is like a fisherman, who, having caught a fish in his net, leaves it in the water for a time; the fish continues to swim about, but all the while the net is round it, and the fisherman will snatch it out in his own good time.
More Ivan Turgenev Quotes
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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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Belonging to oneself–the whole essence of life lies in that.
IVAN TURGENEV -
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 -
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.
IVAN TURGENEV -
We’re young, we’re not monsters, no fools: we’ll conquer happiness for ourselves.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Whatever a person may pray for, that person prays for a miracle. Every prayer comes down to this – Almighty God, grant that two times two not equal four.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Every man’s happiness is built on the unhappi-ness of another.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man’s the workman in it.
IVAN TURGENEV -
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.
IVAN TURGENEV -
I only know that I feel tired, antiquated; I feel as though I had been living a long, long time.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Who among us has the strength to oppose petty egoism, those petty good feelings, pity and remorse?
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 -
A poet must be a psychologist, but a secret one: he should know and feel the roots of phenomena but present only the phenomena themselves in full bloom or as they fade away.
IVAN TURGENEV -
If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.
IVAN TURGENEV -
In my case there was no first love. I began with the second.
IVAN TURGENEV -
I do not know what the heart of a bad man is like. But i do know what the heart of a good man is like. And it is terrible.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Go and try to disprove death. Death will disprove you, and that’s all!
IVAN TURGENEV -
Don’t force me into saying what I don’t want to say, and what I won’t say.
IVAN TURGENEV -
To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.
IVAN TURGENEV -
I never started from ideas but always from character.
IVAN TURGENEV -
He was the soul of politeness to everyone — to some with a hint of aversion, to others with a hint of respect.
IVAN TURGENEV -
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 -
It was only the vulgarly mediocre that repelled her.
IVAN TURGENEV -
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 -
What’s terrible is that there’s nothing terrible, that the very essence of life is petty, uninteresting, and degradingly trite.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Circumstances define us; they force us onto one road or another, and then they punish us for it.
IVAN TURGENEV