Ivan Turgenev Quotes
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I look up to heaven only when I want to sneeze.
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However much you knock at nature's door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words.
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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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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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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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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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Death's an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew.
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I agree with no one's opinion. I have some of my own.
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Every man's happiness is built on the unhappi-ness of another.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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That's what children are for—that their parents may not be bored.
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The temerity to believe in nothing.
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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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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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Belonging to oneself--the whole essence of life lies in that.
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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.
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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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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.