Ivan Turgenev Quotes

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

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

Youth 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.

Mad people all live a long time - you know, every grief has its good side.

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

It was only the vulgarly mediocre that repelled her.

I was as happy as a fish in water, and I could have stayed in that room for ever, have never left that place.

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

I had no first love,' he said at last; 'I began with the second.

First we've got to clear the ground.

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

The fact is that previously they were simply dunces and now they've suddenly become nihilists.

I could not simplify myself.
(From the suicide note of a character named Nejdanov)

I want everything or nothing. A life for a life, taking one and giving up another without hesitation and beyond recall. Or else better have nothing!

To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.

Everyone needs help from everyone else.

Know how to will, and you will be free, and will lead.

We sit in the mud ... and reach for the stars.

Go and try to disprove death. Death will disprove you, and that's all!

I did not want to know whether I was loved, and I did not want to acknowledge to myself that I was not loved;

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

The temerity to believe in nothing.

So many memories and so little worth remembering, and in front of me - a long, long road without a goal ...

Take for yourself what you can, and don't be ruled by others; to belong to oneself - the whole savour of life lies in that.

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

We sit in the mud, my friend, and reach for the stars.

We act by virtue of what we recognize as beneficial. At the present time, negation is the most beneficial of all - and we deny.

That is what poetry can do. It speaks to us of what does not exist, which is not only better than what exists, but even more like the truth.

Whatever man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself ...

I? Believe me, Zinaida Alexandrovna, that whatever you did, however much you make me suffer, I shall love you and adore you to the end of my days.

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

The enchanted world arising out of the dim mists of the past, into which he just stepped, quivered-and disappeared.

Even nightingales can't be fed on fairy tales.

One doesn't know what one doesn't know.

Don't force me into saying what I don't want to say, and what I won't say.

My son,' he wrote to me, 'fear the love of woman; fear that bliss, that poison ...

Circumstances define us; they force us onto one road or another, and then they punish us for it.

The word tomorrow was invented for indecisive people and for children.

I never started from ideas but always from character.

Nature's not a temple, but a workshop, and man's the workman in it.

My dear Natalya Petrovna, there's funny and funny.

Death is something ancient, but it comes fresh to each of us.

Oh we have hard times to live through, those of us who are born spectators.

After all, when you think of it, nothing is stronger in the world...and weaker--than a word!

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

It's fun talking to you ... like walking on the edge of a precipice. At first one's nervous but then courage takes over from somewhere.

the sound of one's own voice has a powerful effect on any man,

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

There are some moments in life, some feelings; one can only point to them and pass by.

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

To tell about a drunken muzhik's beating his wife is incomparably harder than to compose a whole tract about the 'woman question.'

Sometimes little things happen which seem nothing at all, but they hurt.

A son is like a lopped off branch. As a falcon he comes when he wills and goes where he lists.

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

Death doesn't come running, but you can't run away from it, neither; nor must you be helping it along.

The past was a dream wasn't it? And who ever remembers dreams?

How sad that youth, with all its power,
Was given us in vain, to burn;
That we betrayed it every hour,
And were deceived by it in turn;

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

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.

Nowhere does time pass as swiftly as in Russia, though they say that in prison it passes even more quickly.

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

And was it his destined part /
Only one moment in his life /
To be close to your heart?

Take what you can yourself, and don't let others get you into their hands; to belong to oneself, that is the whole thing in life.

Weak people never put an end to things themselves. They always wait for the end.

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

We're young, we're not monsters, no fools: we'll conquer happiness for ourselves.

That's what children are for - that their parents may not be bored.

Every man's happiness is built on the unhappi-ness of another.

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

Words indeed have been my ruin; they have consumed me, and to the end I cannot be free of them.

Significance is sweet ...

What's important is that twice two is four and all the rest's nonsense.

Beware of the love of women; beware of that ecstasy - that slow poison.

Sentimental outbreaks are like liquorice; when first you suck it, it's not bad, but afterwards it leaves a very nasty taste in the mouth.

Caprice and irresponsibility ... .
Those two words sum you up; your whole nature's contained in those
two words.

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.

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

Woe to the heart that has not loved in youth!

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.

One may speak about anything on earth with fire, with enthusiasm, with ecstasy, but one only speaks about oneself with avidity.

Whatever a man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself to this: Great God, grant that twice two be not four.

She found it sinful and expensive to have sugar in her tea, although she herself never spent a penny on anything.

[ ... ] no carrot would be permitted in a soup that had not first assumed a rhomboidal or trapezoidal shape.

What's this?' she asked. 'Is it a sphinx?'
Yes,' he answered, 'and the sphinx is you.

Death's an old story, but new for each person.

It's no good writing if God hasn't given you talent. People will just laugh.

You may feed the wolf as you will; he has always a hankering for the woods.

But I had absolutely lost all sense of personal dignity, and could not tear myself away from the spectacle of my own misery.

In my case there was no first love. I began with the second.

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

In his heart he was highly delighted with his friend's suggestion, but he thought it a duty to conceal his feeling. He was not a nihilist for nothing!

Bazarov drew himself up haughtily. I don't adopt any one's ideas; I have my own.

What a magnificent body, how I should like to see it on the dissecting table.

You are an old pig!'one of them said to the other. 'And that is worse than being a young one.

There is a sweetness in being the sole source, the autocratic
and irresponsible cause of the greatest joy and profoundest pain to another.

The "why not" of youth, the secret desire to know his luck, to try his strength all on his own without the support of another, eventually won through.

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

Who among us has the strength to oppose petty egoism, those petty good feelings, pity and remorse?