We sit in the mud and reach for the stars.
IVAN TURGENEVNothing 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!
More Ivan Turgenev Quotes
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Go and try to disprove death. Death will disprove you, and that’s all!
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 -
One may speak about anything on earth with fire, with enthusiasm, with ecstasy, but one only speaks about oneself with avidity.
IVAN TURGENEV -
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 -
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 -
Love, I thought, is stronger than death or the fear of death. Only by it, by love, life holds together and advances.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Significance is sweet.
IVAN TURGENEV -
What’s important is that twice two is four and all the rest’s nonsense.
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 -
Most people can’t understand how others can blow their noses differently than they do.
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 -
We’re young, we’re not monsters, no fools: we’ll conquer happiness for ourselves.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Even nightingales can’t be fed on fairy tales.
IVAN TURGENEV -
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 -
I believe love produces a certain flowering of the whole personality which nothing else can achieve.
IVAN TURGENEV






