Ivan Turgenev Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• I share no man's opinions; I have my own.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Men, Opinion, Share

  4 Copy quote

• Death is like a fisherman, who, having caught a fish in his net, leaves it in the water for a time; the fish continues to swim about, but all the while the net is round it, and the fisherman will snatch it out in his own good time.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Rivers, Lakes, Sea

  7 Copy quote

• I only know that I feel tired, antiquated; I feel as though I had been living a long, long time.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Tired, Long, Feels

  Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1995). “Fathers and Sons”, p.96, Wordsworth Editions

  4 Copy quote

• I walked in the meadows of green grieving for my life.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Grieving, Green, Meadows

  Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1967). “Sketches from a hunter's album”, Penguin Classics

  5 Copy quote

• Looking about me, listening and recalling what the day had been like, I suddenly felt a secret unease in my heart and raised my eyes to the sky, but even in the sky there seemed to be no tranquillity. Dotted with stars, it constantly quivered and danced and shivered.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Stars, Heart, Eye

  33 Copy quote

• Don't force me into saying what I don't want to say, and what I won't say.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Want, Force

  Ivan Turgenev (2013). “Delphi Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated)”, p.392, Delphi Classics

  6 Copy quote

• It was only the vulgarly mediocre that repelled her.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Mediocre

  Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, Richard Freeborn (1998). “Fathers and Sons”, p.79, Oxford University Press, USA

  9 Copy quote

• Significance is sweet.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Sweet, Significance

  Ivan Turgenev (2013). “Delphi Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated)”, p.573, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

• Nothing is worse and more hurtful than a happiness that comes too late. It can give no pleasure, yet it deprives you of that most precious of rights - the right to swear and curse at your fate!

  Ivan Turgenev

  Fate, Rights, Giving

  18 Copy quote

• I'm through with Tolstoy. He has ceased to exist for me.... If I eat a bowl of soup and like it, I know by that fact alone and with absolute certainty that Tolstoy will find it bad, and vice versa.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Vices, Soup, Facts

  15 Copy quote

• Youth eats all the sugared fancy cakes and regards them as its daily bread. But there'll come a time when you'll start asking just for a crust.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Cake, Fancy, Bread

  Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, Richard Freeborn (1999). “First Love, and Other Stories”, p.100, Oxford University Press, USA

  8 Copy quote

• A withered maple leaf has left its branch and is falling to the ground; its movements resemble those of a butterfly in flight. Isn't it strange? The saddest and deadest of things is yet so like the gayest and most vital of creatures?

  Ivan Turgenev

  Fall, Butterfly, Movement

  Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1961). “Fathers and sons”, Signet Classics

  12 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Spiritual, Art, Creativity

  Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1994). “Essential Turgenev”, p.839, Northwestern University Press

  15 Copy quote

• There is a sweetness in being the sole source, the autocratic
  and irresponsible cause of the greatest joy and profoundest pain to another.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Pain, Joy, Causes

  Ivan Turgenev (2011). “The Torrents of Spring: And First Love”, p.240, The Floating Press

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Inspirational, Art, Work

  Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1994). “Essential Turgenev”, p.813, Northwestern University Press

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Past, Personality, Childhood

  22 Copy quote

• Whereas I think: I’m lying here in a haystack... The tiny space I occupy is so infinitesimal in comparison with the rest of space, which I don’t occupy and which has no relation to me. And the period of time in which I’m fated to live is so insignificant beside the eternity in which I haven’t existed and won’t exist... And yet in this atom, this mathematical point, blood is circulating, a brain is working, desiring something... What chaos! What a farce!

  Ivan Turgenev

  Lying, Thinking, Blood

  7 Copy quote

• I was as happy as a fish in water, and I could have stayed in that room for ever, have never left that place.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Water, Rooms, Fishes

  Ivan Turgenev (2012). “First Love and the Diary of a Superfluous Man”, p.48, Courier Corporation

  6 Copy quote

• The fact is that previously they were simply dunces and now they've suddenly become nihilists.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Facts, Nihilist, Dunces

  Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, Richard Freeborn (1998). “Fathers and Sons”, p.54, Oxford University Press, USA

  4 Copy quote

• He went to bed early, but could not fall asleep. He was haunted by sad and gloomy reflections about the inevitable end- death. These thoughts were familiar to him, many times had he turned them over this way and that, first shuddering at the probability of annihilation, then welcoming it, almost rejoicing in it. Suddenly a peculiarly familiar agitation took possession of him... He mused awhile, sat down at the table, and wrote down the following lines in his sacred copy-book, without a single correction.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Book, Fall, Reflection

  Ivan Turgenev (2013). “Delphi Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated)”, p.870, Delphi Classics

  26 Copy quote

• Sternly, remorselessly, fate guides each of us; only at the beginning, when we're absorbed in details, in all sorts of nonsense, in ourselves, are we unaware of its harsh hand.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Ignorance, Fate, Hands

  Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, Elizabeth Cheresh Allen (1994). “The essential Turgenev”, Northwestern Univ Pr

  6 Copy quote

• One may speak about anything on earth with fire, with enthusiasm, with ecstasy, but one only speaks about oneself with avidity.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Fire, Earth, May

  Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1994). “Essential Turgenev”, p.162, Northwestern University Press

  8 Copy quote

• Most people can't understand how others can blow their noses differently than they do.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Blow, People, Understanding

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Art, Law, Reason

  9 Copy quote

• Whatever man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Prayer, Men, Miracle

  Poems in Prose "Prayer" (1881)

  8 Copy quote

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