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 TURGENEVTo desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.
More Ivan Turgenev Quotes
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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.
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 -
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.
IVAN TURGENEV -
What’s important is that twice two is four and all the rest’s nonsense.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Nothing is worse and more hurtful than a happiness that comes too late.
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 -
Love, I thought, is stronger than death or the fear of death. Only by it, by love, life holds together and advances.
IVAN TURGENEV -
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 -
I am a flirt: I have no heart: I have an actor’s nature.
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.
IVAN TURGENEV -
I never started from ideas but always from character.
IVAN TURGENEV -
I only know that I feel tired, antiquated; I feel as though I had been living a long, long time.
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 -
Death’s an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew.
IVAN TURGENEV -
The word tomorrow was invented for indecisive people and for children.
IVAN TURGENEV