Ivan Turgenev Quotes

Even nightingales can’t be fed on fairy tales.

Each individual is more or less dimly aware of his significance, is aware that he's something innately superior, something eternal--and lives, is obligated to live, in the moment and for the moment.

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.

We sit in the mud... and reach for the stars.

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

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

Nothing is worse and more hurtful than a happiness that comes too late.

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.

Belonging to oneself--the whole essence of life lies in that.

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.

People without firmness of character love to make up a fate for themselves; that relieves them of the necessity of having their own will and of taking responsibility for themselves.

What a magnificent body, how I should like to see it on the dissecting table.

A son is like a lopped off branch. As a falcon he comes when he wills and goes where he lists.

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!

Every man's happiness is built on the unhappi-ness of another.

Nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man's the workman in it.

I look up to heaven only when I want to sneeze.

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

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

There are some moments in life, some feelings; one can only point to them and pass by.

Go and try to disprove death. Death will disprove you, and that's all!

Death's an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew.

The 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.

What's important is that twice two is four and all the rest's nonsense.

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

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.

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?

I agree with no one's opinion. I have some of my own.

To tell about a drunken muzhik's beating his wife is incomparably harder than to compose a whole tract about the 'woman question.'

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!

I was afraid of looking into my heart...afraid of thinking seriously about anything...I did not want to know whether I was loved, and I did not want to admit to myself that I was not loved.

It was only the vulgarly mediocre that repelled her.

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.

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.

Oh youth, youth! You don't worry about anything; you seem to possess all the treasures of the universe--even sorrow gives you pleasure, even grief suits you.... And perhaps the whole secret of your charm lies not in your ability to do everything, but in your ability to think that you will do everything.

There's only one way for an individual to remain upright, not to fall to pieces, not to sink into the mire of self-oblivionorself-contempt. That's calmly to turn away from everything, to say, "Enough!" and, folding one's useless arms across one's empty breast, to retain the ultimate, the sole attainable virtue, the virtue of recognizing one's own insignificance.

What did I hope for, what did I expect, what rich future did I foresee, when the phantom of my first love, rising up for an instant, barely called forth one sigh, one mournful sentiment?

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.

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.

Significance is sweet.

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

To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.

That's what children are for—that their parents may not be bored.

The past was a dream wasn't it? And who ever remembers dreams?

What's terrible is that there's nothing terrible, that the very essence of life is petty, uninteresting, and degradingly trite.

No matter how often you knock at nature's door, she won't answer in words you can understand--for Nature is dumb. She'll vibrate and moan like a violin, but you mustn't expect a song.

A poet must be a psychologist, but a secret one: he should know and feel the roots of phenomena but present only the phenomena themselves in full bloom or as they fade away.

It's all romanticism, nonsense, rottenness, art.