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 TURGENEVEach 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.
More Ivan Turgenev Quotes
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I agree with no one’s opinion. I have some of my own.
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Even nightingales can’t be fed on fairy tales.
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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.
IVAN TURGENEV -
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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Whatever man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself.
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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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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 -
I am a flirt: I have no heart: I have an actor’s nature.
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Behind me there are already so many memories Lots of memories, but no point in remembering them, and ahead of me a long, long road with nothing to aim for I just don’t want to go along it.
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In my case there was no first love. I began with the second.
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Every man’s happiness is built on the unhappi-ness of another.
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A son is like a lopped off branch. As a falcon he comes when he wills and goes where he lists.
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All human beings hang by a thread, an abyss may open under their feet at any moment, and yet they have to go and invent all sorts of difficulties for themselves and spoil their lives.
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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!
IVAN TURGENEV