Ivan Turgenev Quotes
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I never started from ideas but always from character.
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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.
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The fact is that previously they were simply dunces and now they've suddenly become nihilists.
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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?
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In my case there was no first love. I began with the second.
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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.
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There are some moments in life, some feelings; one can only point to them and pass by.
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Don't force me into saying what I don't want to say, and what I won't say.
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However much you knock at nature's door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words.
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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.
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I believe love produces a certain flowering of the whole personality which nothing else can achieve.
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I don't see why it's impossible to express everything that's on one's mind.
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Whatever man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself.
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There is a sweetness in being the sole source, the autocratic and irresponsible cause of the greatest joy and profoundest pain to another.
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What a magnificent body, how I should like to see it on the dissecting table.
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To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.
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I look up to heaven only when I want to sneeze.
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Go and try to disprove death. Death will disprove you, and that's all!
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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.
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Nothing is worse and more hurtful than a happiness that comes too late.
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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.
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Significance is sweet.
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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.
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We’re young, we’re not monsters, no fools: we’ll conquer happiness for ourselves.