I believe love produces a certain flowering of the whole personality which nothing else can achieve.
IVAN TURGENEVA 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.
More Ivan Turgenev Quotes
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We sit in the mud and reach for the stars.
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I agree with no one’s opinion. I have some of my own.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Death’s an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew.
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 -
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 -
It’s all romanticism, nonsense, rottenness, art.
IVAN TURGENEV -
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.
IVAN TURGENEV -
We’re young, we’re not monsters, no fools: we’ll conquer happiness for ourselves.
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 -
Belonging to oneself–the whole essence of life lies in that.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Every man’s happiness is built on the unhappi-ness of another.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Everyone needs help from everyone else.
IVAN TURGENEV -
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.
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 -
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.
IVAN TURGENEV -
I’m incapable of describing the feeling with which I left. I wouldn’t want it ever to be repeated, but I would have considered myself unfortunate if I’d never experienced it.
IVAN TURGENEV -
I only know that I feel tired, antiquated; I feel as though I had been living a long, long time.
IVAN TURGENEV -
One may speak about anything on earth with fire, with enthusiasm, with ecstasy, but one only speaks about oneself with avidity.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Circumstances define us; they force us onto one road or another, and then they punish us for it.
IVAN TURGENEV -
I’ve become convinced that every person should treat himself strictly and even rudely and distrustfully; it’s difficult to tame the beast in oneself.
IVAN TURGENEV -
To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.
IVAN TURGENEV -
I am a flirt: I have no heart: I have an actor’s nature.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Nothing is worse and more hurtful than a happiness that comes too late. It can give no pleasure, yet it deprives you of that most precious of rights – the right to swear and curse at your fate!
IVAN TURGENEV -
Nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man’s the workman in it.
IVAN TURGENEV -
A person who gets angry at his own illness is sure to overcome it.
IVAN TURGENEV -
The fact is that previously they were simply dunces and now they’ve suddenly become nihilists.
IVAN TURGENEV