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That’s what children are for—that their parents may not be bored.

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

Degrade Essence Life Terrible
Most people can’t understand how others can blow their noses differently than they do.
IVAN TURGENEV

Blow Different People Understand
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

Description Experience Feeling Myself Repeat
He was the soul of politeness to everyone — to some with a hint of aversion, to others with a hint of respect.
IVAN TURGENEV

Himself Polite Respect Soul
The fact is that previously they were simply dunces and now they’ve suddenly become nihilists.
IVAN TURGENEV

Atheist Fact Simplicity
To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.
IVAN TURGENEV

Desire Expectation Genuine Holy Sympathy
A son is like a lopped off branch. As a falcon he comes when he wills and goes where he lists.
IVAN TURGENEV

Branch Himself Son Willing
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’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
What a magnificent body, how I should like to see it on the dissecting table.
IVAN TURGENEV

Body Myself Table
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

Childhood Cultivation Life Ourselves Past Personality Task
Every man’s happiness is built on the unhappi-ness of another.
IVAN TURGENEV

Built Happiness Man
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

Bad Goodness Heart Man Myself Terrible
Don’t force me into saying what I don’t want to say, and what I won’t say.
IVAN TURGENEV

Force Myself Talk
What did I hope for, what did I expect, what rich future did I foresee, when the phantom of my first love, rising up for an instant, barely called forth one sigh, one mournful sentiment?
IVAN TURGENEV

Expectation Future Hope Instant Mourn Oneself Rise
If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.
IVAN TURGENEV

Beginning Moments Patience Wait

That’s what children are for—that their parents may not be bored.

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That’s what children are for—that their parents may not be bored.

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