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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.

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
People
Necessity
Fate
Taking
Responsibility
Character
Without
Make
Relieves
Love
Firmness

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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.
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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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 my case there was no first love. I began with the second.
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I'm incapable of describing the feeling with which I left. I wouldn't want it ever to be repeated, but I would have considered myself unfortunate if I'd never experienced it.
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Death is like a fisherman, who, having caught a fish in his net, leaves it in the water for a time the fish continues to swim about, but all the while the net is round it, and the fisherman will snatch it out in his own good time.
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Every man's happiness is built on the unhappi-ness of another.
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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?
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Love, I thought, is stronger than death or the fear of death. Only by it, by love, life holds together and advances.
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There is a sweetness in being the sole source, the autocratic and irresponsible cause of the greatest joy and profoundest pain to another.
Ivan Turgenev
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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.
Ivan Turgenev
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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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What's important is that twice two is four and all the rest's nonsense.
Ivan Turgenev
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What a magnificent body, how I should like to see it on the dissecting table.
Ivan Turgenev
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Don't force me into saying what I don't want to say, and what I won't say.
Ivan Turgenev
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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.
Ivan Turgenev
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Bazarov drew himself up haughtily. I don't adopt any one's ideas I have my own.
Ivan Turgenev
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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.
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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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.
Ivan Turgenev