One may speak about anything on earth with fire, with enthusiasm, with ecstasy, but one only speaks about oneself with avidity.
IVAN TURGENEVNo 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.
More Ivan Turgenev Quotes
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If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.
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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!
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I was as happy as a fish in water, and I could have stayed in that room for ever, have never left that place.
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We’re young, we’re not monsters, no fools: we’ll conquer happiness for ourselves.
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He was the soul of politeness to everyone — to some with a hint of aversion, to others with a hint of respect.
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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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Love, I thought, is stronger than death or the fear of death. Only by it, by love, life holds together and advances.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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Great God, grant that twice two be not four.
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There is a sweetness in being the sole source, the autocratic and irresponsible cause of the greatest joy and profoundest pain to another.
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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 and try to disprove death. Death will disprove you, and that’s all!
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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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The temerity to believe in nothing.
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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.
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Nothing is worse and more hurtful than a happiness that comes too late.
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Significance is sweet.
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The past was a dream wasn’t it? And who ever remembers dreams?
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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.
IVAN TURGENEV -
The word tomorrow was invented for indecisive people and for children.
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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.
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Each individual is more or less dimly aware of his significance, is aware that he’s something innately superior, something eternal–and lives, is obligated to live, in the moment and for the moment.
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Every man’s happiness is built on the unhappi-ness of another.
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I don’t see why it’s impossible to express everything that’s on one’s mind.
IVAN TURGENEV