I never started from ideas but always from character.
IVAN TURGENEVDeath’s an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew.
More Ivan Turgenev Quotes
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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.
IVAN TURGENEV -
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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Whatever a person may pray for, that person prays for a miracle. Every prayer comes down to this – Almighty God, grant that two times two not equal four.
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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.
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Illness isn’t the only thing that spoils the appetite.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Death is like a fisherman, who, having caught a fish in his net, leaves it in the water for a time; the fish continues to swim about, but all the while the net is round it, and the fisherman will snatch it out in his own good time.
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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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Take what you can yourself, and don’t let others get you into their hands; to belong to oneself, that is the whole thing in life.
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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.
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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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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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What a magnificent body, how I should like to see it on the dissecting table.
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I only know that I feel tired, antiquated; I feel as though I had been living a long, long time.
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A person who gets angry at his own illness is sure to overcome it.
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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.
IVAN TURGENEV