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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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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
Understand
Knock
Song
Dumb
Often
Door
Nature
Expect
Moan
Matter
Answer
Mustn
Like
Doors
Vibrate
Answers
Words
Violin

More quotes by Ivan Turgenev

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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.
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We’re young, we’re not monsters, no fools: we’ll conquer happiness for ourselves.
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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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In my case there was no first love. I began with the second.
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Oh, gentle feelings, soft sounds, the goodness and the gradual stilling of a soul that has been moved the melting happiness of the first tender, touching joys of love- where are you?
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That's what children are for—that their parents may not be bored.
Ivan Turgenev
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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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Take what you can yourself, and don't let others get you into their hands to belong to oneself, that is the whole thing in life.
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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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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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I don't see why it's impossible to express everything that's on one's mind.
Ivan Turgenev
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We sit in the mud... and reach for the stars.
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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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.
Ivan Turgenev
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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.
Ivan Turgenev
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I agree with no one's opinion. I have some of my own.
Ivan Turgenev
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The temerity to believe in nothing.
Ivan Turgenev
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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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Great God, grant that twice two be not four.
Ivan Turgenev
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Go and try to disprove death. Death will disprove you, and that's all!
Ivan Turgenev