Each 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.
IVAN TURGENEVIn 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!
More Ivan Turgenev Quotes
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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 -
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 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 -
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 -
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 -
The temerity to believe in nothing.
IVAN TURGENEV -
The fact is that previously they were simply dunces and now they’ve suddenly become nihilists.
IVAN TURGENEV -
It’s all romanticism, nonsense, rottenness, art.
IVAN TURGENEV -
Everyone needs help from everyone else.
IVAN TURGENEV -
I believe love produces a certain flowering of the whole personality which nothing else can achieve.
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 -
He was the soul of politeness to everyone — to some with a hint of aversion, to others with a hint of respect.
IVAN TURGENEV -
We Russians have assigned ourselves no other task in life but the cultivation of our own personalities, and when we’re barely past childhood, we set to work to cultivate them, those unfortunate personalities.
IVAN TURGENEV -
You may live a long while with some people and be on friendly terms with them and never speak openly with them from your soul.
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.
IVAN TURGENEV