Nothing is worse and more hurtful than a happiness that comes too late. It can give no pleasure, yet it deprives you of that most precious of rights – the right to swear and curse at your fate!
IVAN TURGENEVYouth eats all the sugared fancy cakes and regards them as its daily bread. But there’ll come a time when you’ll start asking just for a crust.
More Ivan Turgenev Quotes
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Don’t force me into saying what I don’t want to say, and what I won’t say.
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Bazarov drew himself up haughtily. “I don’t adopt any one’s ideas; I have my own.
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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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In 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!
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The temerity to believe in nothing.
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Whatever man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself.
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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.
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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.
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There is a sweetness in being the sole source, the autocratic and irresponsible cause of the greatest joy and profoundest pain to another.
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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.
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However much you knock at nature’s door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words.
IVAN TURGENEV -
I walked in the meadows of green grieving for my life.
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Circumstances define us; they force us onto one road or another, and then they punish us for it.
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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.
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Great God, grant that twice two be not four.
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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.
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I only know that I feel tired, antiquated; I feel as though I had been living a long, long time.
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We sit in the mud and reach for the stars.
IVAN TURGENEV -
A son is like a lopped off branch. As a falcon he comes when he wills and goes where he lists.
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I share no man’s opinions; I have my own.
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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.
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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.
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Significance is sweet.
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I believe love produces a certain flowering of the whole personality which nothing else can achieve.
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What’s important is that twice two is four and all the rest’s nonsense.
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I agree with no one’s opinion. I have some of my own.
IVAN TURGENEV