The word tomorrow was invented for indecisive people and for children.
IVAN TURGENEVI’ve become convinced that every person should treat himself strictly and even rudely and distrustfully; it’s difficult to tame the beast in oneself.
More Ivan Turgenev Quotes
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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 -
A person who gets angry at his own illness is sure to overcome it.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Illness isn’t the only thing that spoils the appetite.
IVAN TURGENEV -
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.
IVAN TURGENEV -
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.
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 -
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 -
One may speak about anything on earth with fire, with enthusiasm, with ecstasy, but one only speaks about oneself with avidity.
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 look up to heaven only when I want to sneeze.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Circumstances define us; they force us onto one road or another, and then they punish us for it.
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 -
I do not know what the heart of a bad man is like. But i do know what the heart of a good man is like. And it is terrible.
IVAN TURGENEV -
I’m incapable of describing the feeling with which I left. I wouldn’t want it ever to be repeated, but I would have considered myself unfortunate if I’d never experienced it.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Take what you can yourself, and don’t let others get you into their hands; to belong to oneself, that is the whole thing in life.
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 -
Belonging to oneself–the whole essence of life lies in that.
IVAN TURGENEV -
I only know that I feel tired, antiquated; I feel as though I had been living a long, long time.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man’s the workman in it.
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 -
What a magnificent body, how I should like to see it on the dissecting table.
IVAN TURGENEV -
I am a flirt: I have no heart: I have an actor’s nature.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Go and try to disprove death. Death will disprove you, and that’s all!
IVAN TURGENEV -
If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.
IVAN TURGENEV -
What’s terrible is that there’s nothing terrible, that the very essence of life is petty, uninteresting, and degradingly trite.
IVAN TURGENEV