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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!

Ivan Turgenev

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

Answer Expectation Nature Song Spiritual Understand Word Yourself
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

Childhood Cultivation Life Ourselves Past Personality Task
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.
IVAN TURGENEV

Admit Afraid Heart Love Myself
It’s all romanticism, nonsense, rottenness, art.
IVAN TURGENEV

Art Romanticism Stupidity
Death’s an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew.
IVAN TURGENEV

Death Deep Encounter Joke New
Love, I thought, is stronger than death or the fear of death. Only by it, by love, life holds together and advances.
IVAN TURGENEV

Death Fear Love Myself Thinking Togetherness
However much you knock at nature’s door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words.
IVAN TURGENEV

Answer Door Nature Word
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

Body Condition Feeling Himself Love Permission Possession Sick Soul Willing
There are some moments in life, some feelings; one can only point to them and pass by.
IVAN TURGENEV

Feeling Life Moments Pass Point
The fact is that previously they were simply dunces and now they’ve suddenly become nihilists.
IVAN TURGENEV

Atheist Fact Simplicity
What’s important is that twice two is four and all the rest’s nonsense.
IVAN TURGENEV

Important Stupidity
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.
IVAN TURGENEV

Better Existence Poetry Talk Truth
I’m through with Tolstoy. He has ceased to exist for me…. If I eat a bowl of soup and like it, I know by that fact alone and with absolute certainty that Tolstoy will find it bad, and vice versa.
IVAN TURGENEV

Alone Bad Existence Fact Myself
Nature cares nothing for logic, our human logic: she has her own, which we do not recognize and do not acknowledge until we are crushed under its wheel.
IVAN TURGENEV

Acknowledgement Care Crush Human Logic Nature Recognition
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.
IVAN TURGENEV

Angry Failure Far Jealous Road Strength
That’s what children are for—that their parents may not be bored.
IVAN TURGENEV

Bored Children Parents

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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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!

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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