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 TURGENEVI’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.
More Ivan Turgenev Quotes
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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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Whatever man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself.
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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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There are some moments in life, some feelings; one can only point to them and pass by.
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To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.
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If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.
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What a magnificent body, how I should like to see it on the dissecting table.
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So many memories and so little worth remembering, and in front of me – a long, long road without a goal.
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That’s what children are for—that their parents may not be bored.
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People without firmness of character love to make up a fate for themselves; that relieves them of the necessity of having their own will and of taking responsibility for themselves.
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Don’t force me into saying what I don’t want to say, and what I won’t say.
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I don’t see why it’s impossible to express everything that’s on one’s mind.
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I walked in the meadows of green grieving for my life.
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Belonging to oneself–the whole essence of life lies in that.
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Time, 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.
IVAN TURGENEV