Ivan Turgenev
25 quotes
Biography
"If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin."
"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."
"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?"
"We’re young, we’re not monsters, no fools: we’ll conquer happiness for ourselves."
"For myself, I detest the fellow, and think him a charlatan. I am certain that, in spite of his frogs, he is making no real progress in physics."
"Bazarov drew himself up haughtily. "I don't adopt any one's ideas; I have my own.""
"Death is an old joke, but it comes like new to everyone."
"'There was a time,' Nikolai Artemyevitch resumed, 'when daughters did not allow themselves to look down on their parents—when the parental authority forced the disobedient to tremble. That time has passed, unhappily: so at least many persons imagine; but let me tell you, there are still laws which do not permit—do not permit—in fact there are still laws. I beg you to mark that: there are still laws——'"
"Our author first made a name by his striking sketches "The Papers of a Sportsman" (Zapiski Okhotnika), in which the miserable condition of the peasants was described with startling realism. The work appeared in a collected form in 1852. It was read by all classes, including the emperor himself, and it undoubtedly hurried on the great work of emancipation."
"Unquestionably Turgueniev may be considered one of the great novelists, worthy to be ranked with Thackeray, Dickens and George Eliot; with the genius of the last of these he has many affinities. His studies of human nature are profound, and he has the wide sympathies which are essential to genius of the highest order. A melancholy, almost pessimist, feeling pervades his writings, a morbid self-analysis which seems natural to the Slavonic mind. The closing chapter of “A Nest of Nobles” is one of the saddest and at the same time truest pages in the whole range of existing novels."
"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!"
"Death's an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew."
"Nature creates while destroying, and doesn't care whether it creates or destroys as long as life isn't extinguished, as long as death doesn't lose its rights."
"Who among us has the strength to oppose petty egoism, those petty good feelings, pity and remorse?"
"To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness."
"It’s strange how things happen in life: you live with someone for a long time, you are on the best of terms, yet you never once speak to them frankly and from the heart; with someone else, you’ve hardly even got acquainted - and there you are: as if at confession, one or other of you is blurting out all his most intimate secrets."
"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."
"The word tomorrow was invented for indecisive people and for children."
"Can it be thattheir prayers and their tears are fruitless? Can it be that love,sacred devoted love, is not all powerful? Oh, no! Howeverpassionate, sinful or rebellious the heart hidden in the tomb, theflowers growing over it peep at us serenely with their innocent eyes;they tell us not only of eternal peace, of that great peace of"indifferent" nature; they tell us also of eternal reconciliation andof life without end."
"And was it his destined part / Only one moment in his life / To be close to your heart?"
"Time sometimes flies like a bird, sometimes crawls like a snail; but a man is happiest when he does not even notice whether it passes swiftly or slowly."
"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 no good writing if God hasn't given you talent. People will just laugh."
"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."
"Women... can't live with 'em... can't shoot 'em."