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

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Ivan Turgenev
Age: 65 †
Born: 1818
Born: January 1
Died: 1883
Died: January 1
Dramaturge
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Playwright
Poet
Prosaist
Translator
Writer
Orel
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev
Movement
Movements
Gayest
Strange
Butterfly
Maple
Fall
Vital
Withered
Left
Branches
Resemble
Things
Flight
Saddest
Like
Falling
Leafs
Ground
Leaf
Creatures
Branch

More quotes by Ivan Turgenev

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Tempered, gradual animation, the methodical restrain of sensations and energies, the equilibrium of sickness and health in each creature--this is nature's essence, its immutable law, this is what it's based on and what it adheres to.
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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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We’re young, we’re not monsters, no fools: we’ll conquer happiness for ourselves.
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It's all romanticism, nonsense, rottenness, art.
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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.
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In my case there was no first love. I began with the second.
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Whatever man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself.
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Life deceives everyone except the individual who doesn't contemplate it, the individual who demands nothing from it, the individual who serenely accepts its few gifts and serenely makes the most of them.
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It was only the vulgarly mediocre that repelled her.
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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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Don't force me into saying what I don't want to say, and what I won't say.
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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.
Ivan Turgenev
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I walked in the meadows of green grieving for my life.
Ivan Turgenev
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However passionate, sinning, and rebellious the heart hidden in the tomb, the flowers growing over it peep serenely at us with their innocent eyes they tell us not of eternal peace alone, of that great peace of indifferent nature: they tell us, too, of eternal reconciliation and of life without end.
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What's important is that twice two is four and all the rest's nonsense.
Ivan Turgenev
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What's terrible is that there's nothing terrible, that the very essence of life is petty, uninteresting, and degradingly trite.
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Behind me there are already so many memories (...) Lots of memories, but no point in remembering them, and ahead of me a long, long road with nothing to aim for ... I just don't want to go along it.
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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
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Nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man's the workman in it.
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I only know that I feel tired, antiquated I feel as though I had been living a long, long time.
Ivan Turgenev