Ivan Turgenev Quotations

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?

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.

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

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!

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

To mortify and even to injure an opponent, reproach him with the very defect or vice you feel in yourself

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

The boldness to believe in nothing (Fathers and Sons)

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

Significance is sweet ...

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.

Only one thing bothered me: at this very moment, as they say, of inexplicable bliss there would be a sinking feeling at the pit of my stomach and my abdomen would be assailed by a melancholy, cold shivering. In the end I couldn't abide such happiness and ran away.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Tempered, gradual animation, the methodical restrain of sensations and energies, the equilibrium of sickness and health in each creature--this is nature's essence, its immutable law, this is what it's based on and what it adheres to.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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.

The temerity to believe in nothing.

Oh youth, youth! You don't worry about anything; you seem to possess all the treasures of the universe--even sorrow gives you pleasure, even grief suits you.... And perhaps the whole secret of your charm lies not in your ability to do everything, but in your ability to think that you will do everything.

Everyone needs help from everyone else.

It was only the vulgarly mediocre that repelled her.

Whereas I think: I’m lying here in a haystack... The tiny space I occupy is so infinitesimal in comparison with the rest of space, which I don’t occupy and which has no relation to me. And the period of time in which I’m fated to live is so insignificant beside the eternity in which I haven’t existed and won’t exist... And yet in this atom, this mathematical point, blood is circulating, a brain is working, desiring something... What chaos! What a farce!

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

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.

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

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

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.

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!

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.

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

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

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:

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.

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.

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

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.

Even nightingales can’t be fed on fairy tales.

Great God, grant that twice two be not four.

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

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.

I never started from ideas but always from character.

Oh, gentle feelings, soft sounds, the goodness and the gradual stilling of a soul that has been moved; the melting happiness of the first tender, touching joys of love- where are you?

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.

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

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

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...

Nothing is worse and more hurtful than a happiness that comes too late.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

We Russians have assigned ourselves no other task in life but the cultivation of our own personalities, and when we're barely past childhood, we set to work to cultivate them, those unfortunate personalities.

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.

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.