-
Most people can't understand how others can blow their noses differently than they do.
Ivan Turgenev
-
Significance is sweet.
Ivan Turgenev
-
I look up to heaven only when I want to sneeze.
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
-
If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.
Ivan Turgenev
-
Everyone needs help from everyone else.
Ivan Turgenev
-
It was only the vulgarly mediocre that repelled her.
Ivan Turgenev
-
We’re young, we’re not monsters, no fools: we’ll conquer happiness for ourselves.
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
-
Go and try to disprove death. Death will disprove you, and that's all!
Ivan Turgenev
-
That's what children are for—that their parents may not be bored.
Ivan Turgenev
-
One may speak about anything on earth with fire, with enthusiasm, with ecstasy, but one only speaks about oneself with avidity.
Ivan Turgenev
-
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!
Ivan Turgenev
-
Circumstances define us; they force us onto one road or another, and then they punish us for it.
Ivan Turgenev
-
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.
Ivan Turgenev
-
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.
Ivan Turgenev
-
Death's an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew.
Ivan Turgenev
-
I agree with no one's opinion. I have some of my own.
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
-
The temerity to believe in nothing.
Ivan Turgenev
-
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.
Ivan Turgenev
-
He was the soul of politeness to everyone -- to some with a hint of aversion, to others with a hint of respect.
Ivan Turgenev
-
Belonging to oneself--the whole essence of life lies in that.
Ivan Turgenev
-
I share no man's opinions; I have my own.
Ivan Turgenev
