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 TURGENEVLove 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.
More Ivan Turgenev Quotes
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Youth eats all the sugared fancy cakes and regards them as its daily bread. But there’ll come a time when you’ll start asking just for a crust.
IVAN TURGENEV -
It was only the vulgarly mediocre that repelled her.
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.
IVAN TURGENEV -
I only know that I feel tired, antiquated; I feel as though I had been living a long, long time.
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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 -
What did I hope for, what did I expect, what rich future did I foresee, when the phantom of my first love, rising up for an instant, barely called forth one sigh, one mournful sentiment?
IVAN TURGENEV -
The fact is that previously they were simply dunces and now they’ve suddenly become nihilists.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Circumstances define us; they force us onto one road or another, and then they punish us for it.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Sternly, remorselessly, fate guides each of us; only at the beginning, when we’re absorbed in details, in all sorts of nonsense, in ourselves, are we unaware of its harsh hand.
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 -
One may speak about anything on earth with fire, with enthusiasm, with ecstasy, but one only speaks about oneself with avidity.
IVAN TURGENEV -
I don’t see why it’s impossible to express everything that’s on one’s mind.
IVAN TURGENEV -
We sit in the mud and reach for the stars.
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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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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