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To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.

Ivan Turgenev

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

Creation Destroy Nature Right
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

Happiness Myself Place Room Stay Water
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
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

Equality Miracle Person Prayer
What’s important is that twice two is four and all the rest’s nonsense.
IVAN TURGENEV

Important Stupidity
Nothing is worse and more hurtful than a happiness that comes too late.
IVAN TURGENEV

Happiness Hurt Late Worst
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
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
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 am a flirt: I have no heart: I have an actor’s nature.
IVAN TURGENEV

Actor Flirt Heart Nature
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

Death Goodness Leaving Time Water
I never started from ideas but always from character.
IVAN TURGENEV

Character Ideas Myself Start
I only know that I feel tired, antiquated; I feel as though I had been living a long, long time.
IVAN TURGENEV

Feeling Live Myself Time
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

Beginning Detail Fate Guide Hands Harsh Ourselves
Death’s an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew.
IVAN TURGENEV

Death Deep Encounter Joke New
The word tomorrow was invented for indecisive people and for children.
IVAN TURGENEV

Children Indecision People Word

To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.

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To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.

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