Ivan Turgenev Quotes
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A son is like a lopped off branch. As a falcon he comes when he wills and goes where he lists.
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However much you knock at nature's door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words.
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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?
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The temerity to believe in nothing.
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Don't force me into saying what I don't want to say, and what I won't say.
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a person who gets angry at his own illness is sure to overcome it
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It was only the vulgarly mediocre that repelled her.
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Ah, but in time the heat of noontide passes, and to it there succeed nightfall and dusk, with a return to the quiet fold where for the weary an the heavy-laden there waits sleep, sweet sleep.
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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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To tell about a drunken muzhik's beating his wife is incomparably harder than to compose a whole tract about the 'woman question.'
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Go and try to disprove death. Death will disprove you, and that's all!
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I look up to heaven only when I want to sneeze.
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Everyone needs help from everyone else.
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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.
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I only know that I feel tired, antiquated; I feel as though I had been living a long, long time.
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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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I was as happy as a fish in water, and I could have stayed in that room for ever, have never left that place.
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Anyone who has crossed from the district of Bolkhov into that of Zhizdra will probably have been struck by the sharp difference between the natives of the provinces of Orel and Kaluga.
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We’re young, we’re not monsters, no fools: we’ll conquer happiness for ourselves.
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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.
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Even nightingales can’t be fed on fairy tales.
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Nature cares nothing for logic, our human logic: she has her own, which we do not recognize and do not acknowledge until we are crushed under its wheel
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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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Belonging to oneself--the whole essence of life lies in that.
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So long as one's just dreaming about what to do, one can soar like an eagle and move mountains, it seems, but as soon as one starts doing it one gets worn out and tired.
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Circumstances define us; they force us onto one road or another, and then they punish us for it.
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Significance is sweet.
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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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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.
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That's what children are for—that their parents may not be bored.
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