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 TurgenevThe people who bind themselves to systems are those who are unable to encompass the whole truth and try to catch it by the tail; a system is like the tail of truth, but truth is like a lizard; it leaves its tail in your fingers and runs away knowing full well that it will grow a new one in a twinkling.
Ivan TurgenevWhereas I think: Iโm lying here in a haystack... The tiny space I occupy is so infinitesimal in comparison with the rest of space, which I donโt occupy and which has no relation to me. And the period of time in which Iโm fated to live is so insignificant beside the eternity in which I havenโt existed and wonโt 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