Ivan Turgenev Quotes
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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.
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Everyone needs help from everyone else.
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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.
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Death's an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew.
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Circumstances define us; they force us onto one road or another, and then they punish us for it.
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Every man's happiness is built on the unhappi-ness of another.
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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.
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It was only the vulgarly mediocre that repelled her.
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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!
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If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.
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Most people can't understand how others can blow their noses differently than they do.
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The past was a dream wasn't it? And who ever remembers dreams?
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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.
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A person who gets angry at his own illness is sure to overcome it.
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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.
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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.
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The temerity to believe in nothing.
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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.
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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.
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That's what children are for—that their parents may not be bored.
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He was the soul of politeness to everyone -- to some with a hint of aversion, to others with a hint of respect.
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Belonging to oneself--the whole essence of life lies in that.
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What's terrible is that there's nothing terrible, that the very essence of life is petty, uninteresting, and degradingly trite.
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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.