Top 101 Quotes & Sayings by Ivan Turgenev
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev.
Last updated on November 21, 2024.
Most people can't understand how others can blow their noses differently than they do.
We sit in the mud... and reach for the stars.
One may speak about anything on earth with fire, with enthusiasm, with ecstasy, but one only speaks about oneself with avidity.
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!
Women... can't live with 'em... can't shoot 'em.
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.
Time sometimes flies like a bird, sometimes crawls like a snail; but a man is happiest when he does not even notice whether it passes swiftly or slowly.
People without firmness of character love to make up a fate for themselves; that relieves them of the necessity of having their own will and of taking responsibility for themselves.
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.
Death's an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew.
I agree with no one's opinion. I have some of my own.
However much you knock at nature's door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words.
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.
There are some moments in life, some feelings; one can only point to them and pass by.
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.
Circumstances define us; they force us onto one road or another, and then they punish us for it.
To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.
The word tomorrow was invented for indecisive people and for children.
Who among us has the strength to oppose petty egoism, those petty good feelings, pity and remorse?
Go and try to disprove death. Death will disprove you, and that's all!
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.
What's important is that twice two is four and all the rest's nonsense.
Everyone needs help from everyone else.
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
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.
I never started from ideas but always from character.
I believe love produces a certain flowering of the whole personality which nothing else can achieve.
There's something tragic in the fate of almost every person--it's just that the tragic is often concealed from a person by the banal surface of life.... A woman will complain of indigestion and not even know that what she means is that her whole life has been shattered.
I was afraid of looking into my heart...afraid of thinking seriously about anything...I did not want to know whether I was loved, and I did not want to admit to myself that I was not loved.
I only know that I feel tired, antiquated; I feel as though I had been living a long, long time.
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.
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.
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.
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.
a person who gets angry at his own illness is sure to overcome it
The people who bind themselves to systems are those who are unable to encompass the whole truth and try to catch it by the tail; a system is like the tail of truth, but truth is like a lizard; it leaves its tail in your fingers and runs away knowing full well that it will grow a new one in a twinkling.
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.
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.
Nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man's the workman in it.
That's what children are for—that their parents may not be bored.
Don't force me into saying what I don't want to say, and what I won't say.
In my case there was no first love. I began with the second.
So many memories and so little worth remembering, and in front of me - a long, long road without a goal.
I share no man's opinions; I have my own.
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.
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.
So long as one's just dreaming about what to do, one can soar like an eagle and move mountains, it seems, but as soon as one starts doing it one gets worn out and tired.
There's only one way for an individual to remain upright, not to fall to pieces, not to sink into the mire of self-oblivionorself-contempt. That's calmly to turn away from everything, to say, "Enough!" and, folding one's useless arms across one's empty breast, to retain the ultimate, the sole attainable virtue, the virtue of recognizing one's own insignificance.
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.
Nothing is worse and more hurtful than a happiness that comes too late.
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.
Love, I thought, is stronger than death or the fear of death. Only by it, by love, life holds together and advances.
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.
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.
There is a sweetness in being the sole source, the autocratic
and irresponsible cause of the greatest joy and profoundest pain to another.
Every man's happiness is built on the unhappi-ness of another.
I don't see why it's impossible to express everything that's on one's mind.
If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.
Belonging to oneself--the whole essence of life lies in that.
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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