Even nightingales can’t be fed on fairy tales.
IVAN TURGENEVCircumstances define us; they force us onto one road or another, and then they punish us for it.
More Ivan Turgenev Quotes
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Whatever man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself.
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However much you knock at nature’s door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words.
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No matter how often you knock at nature’s door, she won’t answer in words you can understand–for Nature is dumb. She’ll vibrate and moan like a violin, but you mustn’t expect a song.
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The past was a dream wasn’t it? And who ever remembers dreams?
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In my case there was no first love. I began with the second.
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Nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man’s the workman in it.
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Significance is sweet.
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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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What a magnificent body, how I should like to see it on the dissecting table.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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I believe love produces a certain flowering of the whole personality which nothing else can achieve.
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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.
IVAN TURGENEV