Ivan Turgenev Quotes

I don’t see why it’s impossible to express everything that’s on one’s mind.

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?

Most people can’t understand how others can blow their noses differently than they do.

However much you knock at nature’s door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words.

Time, as is well known, sometimes flies like a bird and sometimes crawls like a worm, but human beings are generally particularly happy when they don’t notice whether it’s passing quickly or slowly.

What’s terrible is that there’s nothing terrible, that the very essence of life is petty, uninteresting, and degradingly trite.

Love, I thought, is stronger than death or the fear of death. Only by it, by love, life holds together and advances.

Belonging to oneself–the whole essence of life lies in that.

No matter how often you knock at nature’s door, she won’t answer in words you can understand–for Nature is dumb. She’ll vibrate and moan like a violin, but you mustn’t expect a song.

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.