Ivan Turgenev famous quotes

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

#Motivational #Business #Inspiration

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

#Encounters #Individual #Jokes

We sit in the mud... and reach for the stars.
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Stars #Mud

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.
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Anger #Envy #Failing

I never started from ideas but always from character.
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Writing #Character #Ideas

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.
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Character #Responsibility #Fate

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.
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Bird #Sometimes #Time Passing

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?
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Joy #Feelings #Soul

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.
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Memories #Long #Want

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

#Children #Bored #Parent

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.
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Heart #Men #Good Man

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

#Nature #Men #Temples

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...
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Heart #Thinking #Want

The word tomorrow was invented for indecisive people and for children.
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Children #People #Tomorrow

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

#Hurtful #Too Late

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.
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Roots #Secret #Poet

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
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Nature #Wheels #Care

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!
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Fate #Rights #Giving

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

#Force #Circumstances

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.
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Art #Law #Reason

It's all romanticism, nonsense, rottenness, art.
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Art #Nonsense #Romanticism

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

#Memories #Long #Goal

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.
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Lakes #Sea #Fishing

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.
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Doe #Speak

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!
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Lying #Thinking #Blood

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?
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Fall #Butterfly #Movement

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

#Ideas

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

#Pain #Joy #Causes

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

#Love #Together #Stronger

I look up to heaven only when I want to sneeze.
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Heaven #Looks #Want

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.
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Hands #Oneself

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.
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Nature #Rights #Long

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

#Heart #Flirting #Actors

The temerity to believe in nothing.
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Believe #Atheism

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

#Opinion #Agree

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!
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Country #Powerful #Fate

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

#Tired #Long #Feels

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.
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Running #Knowing #People

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

#Want #Force

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.
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Sweet #Sleep #Waiting

Everyone needs help from everyone else.
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Inspiration #Needs #Helping

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:
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Book #Fall #Reflection

Significance is sweet ...
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Sweet #Significance

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

#Dream #Past #Remember

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

#Blow #People #Noses

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.
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Prayer #Two #Miracle

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.
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Dream #Moving #Tired

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.
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Cake #Asking #Fancy

It was only the vulgarly mediocre that repelled her.
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Mediocre

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

#Soul #Hints #Aversion

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

#Two #Important #Four

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

#Facts #Nihilist #Dunces

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

#Water #Rooms #Fishes

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.
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Flower #Eye #Heart

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

#Nature #Doors #Answers

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.
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Stars #Eye #Heart

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.
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Feelings #Want #Unfortunate

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.
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Feelings #Pits #Abdomen

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

#Grieving #Green #Meadows

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

#Monsters #Fool #Conquer

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

#Body #Tables #Should

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

#Overcoming #Illness #Persons

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

#Sympathy #Profound #Desire

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

#Children #Son #Branches

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.
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Friendship #Long #People

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

#Feelings #Pity #Good Feeling

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

#Happiness #Men

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.
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Dog #Smart #Fall

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

#Prayer #Men #Miracle

Great God, grant that twice two be not four.
-- Ivan Turgenev

#Atheist #Two #Four

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

#Love You #Believe #Personality

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

#Feelings #Moments

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

#Fire #Earth #May

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

#Mind #Impossible