Ivan Turgenev Quotes
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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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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.
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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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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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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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In my case there was no first love. I began with the second.
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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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Whatever man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself.
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Everyone needs help from everyone else.
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Go and try to disprove death. Death will disprove you, and that's all!
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However much you knock at nature's door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words.
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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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To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.
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I believe love produces a certain flowering of the whole personality which nothing else can achieve.
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Significance is sweet.
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Nothing is worse and more hurtful than a happiness that comes too late.
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What a magnificent body, how I should like to see it on the dissecting table.
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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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We’re young, we’re not monsters, no fools: we’ll conquer happiness for ourselves.
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I look up to heaven only when I want to sneeze.
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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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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.