Best 111 quotes of Ivan Turgenev on MyQuotes

Ivan Turgenev

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    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.

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    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 sortsof difficulties for themselves and spoil their lives.

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    Ivan Turgenev

    Anyone who has crossed from the district of Bolkhov into that of Zhizdra will probably have been struck by the sharp difference between the natives of the provinces of Orel and Kaluga.

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    Ivan Turgenev

    a person who gets angry at his own illness is sure to overcome it

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    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.

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    Ivan Turgenev

    Art, if one employs this term in the broad sense that includes poetry within its realm, is an art of creation laden with ideals, located at the very core of the life of a people, defining the spiritual and moral shape of that life.

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    Ivan Turgenev

    As for work, without it, without painstaking work, any writer or artist definitely remains a dilettante; there's no point in waiting for so-called blissful moments, for inspiration; if it comes, so much the better--but you keep working anyway.

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    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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    Ivan Turgenev

    A withered maple leaf has left its branch and is falling to the ground; its movements resemble those of a butterfly in flight. Isn't it strange? The saddest and deadest of things is yet so like the gayest and most vital of creatures?

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    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.

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    Ivan Turgenev

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

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    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.

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    Ivan Turgenev

    Death's an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew.

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    Ivan Turgenev

    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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    Ivan Turgenev

    Even nightingales can’t be fed on fairy tales.

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    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.

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    Ivan Turgenev

    Great God, grant that twice two be not four.

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    Ivan Turgenev

    He was the soul of politeness to everyone -- to some with a hint of aversion, to others with a hint of respect.

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    Ivan Turgenev

    He went to bed early, but could not fall asleep. He was haunted by sad and gloomy reflections about the inevitable end- death. These thoughts were familiar to him, many times had he turned them over this way and that, first shuddering at the probability of annihilation, then welcoming it, almost rejoicing in it. Suddenly a peculiarly familiar agitation took possession of him... He mused awhile, sat down at the table, and wrote down the following lines in his sacred copy-book, without a single correction.

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    Ivan Turgenev

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

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    Ivan Turgenev

    However passionate, sinning, and rebellious the heart hidden in the tomb, the flowers growing over it peep serenely at us with their innocent eyes; they tell us not of eternal peace alone, of that great peace of "indifferent" nature: they tell us, too, of eternal reconciliation and of life without end.

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    Ivan Turgenev

    I agree with no one's opinion. I have some of my own.

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    Ivan Turgenev

    I am a flirt: I have no heart: I have an actor's nature.

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    Ivan Turgenev

    I believe love produces a certain flowering of the whole personality which nothing else can achieve.

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    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.

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    Ivan Turgenev

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

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    Ivan Turgenev

    If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.

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    Ivan Turgenev

    Illness isn't the only thing that spoils the appetite.

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    Ivan Turgenev

    I look up to heaven only when I want to sneeze.

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    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.

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    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.

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    Ivan Turgenev

    I must say, though, that a man who has staked his whole life on the card of a woman's love and who, when that card is trumped, falls to pieces and lets himself go to the dogs -- a fellow like that is not a man, not a male. You say he's unhappy -- you know best. But all the nonsense hasn't been taken out of him yet. I'm sure he really believes he's a smart fellow just because he reads that rag Galignani and saves a muzhik from a flogging once a month.

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    Ivan Turgenev

    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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    Ivan Turgenev

    I never started from ideas but always from character.

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    Ivan Turgenev

    In the end, nature is inexorable: it has no reason to hurry and, sooner or later, it takes what belongs to it. Unconsciously and inflexibly obedient to its own laws, it doesn't know art, just as it doesn't know freedom, just as it doesn't know goodness.

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    Ivan Turgenev

    I only know that I feel tired, antiquated; I feel as though I had been living a long, long time.

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    Ivan Turgenev

    I share no man's opinions; I have my own.

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    Ivan Turgenev

    It's all romanticism, nonsense, rottenness, art.

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    Ivan Turgenev

    I've become convinced that every person should treat himself strictly and even rudely and distrustfully; it's difficult to tame the beast in oneself.

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    Ivan Turgenev

    I walked in the meadows of green grieving for my life.

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    Ivan Turgenev

    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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    Ivan Turgenev

    Life deceives everyone except the individual who doesn't contemplate it, the individual who demands nothing from it, the individual who serenely accepts its few gifts and serenely makes the most of them.

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    Ivan Turgenev

    Looking about me, listening and recalling what the day had been like, I suddenly felt a secret unease in my heart and raised my eyes to the sky, but even in the sky there seemed to be no tranquillity. Dotted with stars, it constantly quivered and danced and shivered.

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    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.

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    Ivan Turgenev

    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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    Ivan Turgenev

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

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    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

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    Ivan Turgenev

    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.

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    Ivan Turgenev

    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.

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    Ivan Turgenev

    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!