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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 -
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
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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 -
There are some moments in life, some feelings; one can only point to them and pass by.
Ivan Turgenev -
However much you knock at nature's door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words.
Ivan Turgenev -
I never started from ideas but always from character.
Ivan Turgenev -
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.
Ivan Turgenev -
Don't force me into saying what I don't want to say, and what I won't say.
Ivan Turgenev
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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 -
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 -
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.
Ivan Turgenev -
I believe love produces a certain flowering of the whole personality which nothing else can achieve.
Ivan Turgenev -
I don't see why it's impossible to express everything that's on one's mind.
Ivan Turgenev -
Nothing is worse and more hurtful than a happiness that comes too late.
Ivan Turgenev
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Go and try to disprove death. Death will disprove you, and that's all!
Ivan Turgenev -
We’re young, we’re not monsters, no fools: we’ll conquer happiness for ourselves.
Ivan Turgenev -
Whatever man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself.
Ivan Turgenev -
What a magnificent body, how I should like to see it on the dissecting table.
Ivan Turgenev -
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 -
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
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One may speak about anything on earth with fire, with enthusiasm, with ecstasy, but one only speaks about oneself with avidity.
Ivan Turgenev -
I look up to heaven only when I want to sneeze.
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.
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.
Ivan Turgenev