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There's something tragic in the fate of almost every person--it's just that the tragic is often concealed from a person by the banal surface of life.... A woman will complain of indigestion and not even know that what she means is that her whole life has been shattered.

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
Every
Woman
Concealed
Something
Means
Complain
Life
Often
Tragic
Persons
Complaining
Person
Surface
Whole
Tragedy
Indigestion
Mean
Fate
Banal
Even
Almost
Shattered

More quotes by Ivan Turgenev

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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's an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew.
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What's important is that twice two is four and all the rest's nonsense.
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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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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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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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Belonging to oneself--the whole essence of life lies in that.
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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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What a magnificent body, how I should like to see it on the dissecting table.
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I've become convinced that every person should treat himself strictly and even rudely and distrustfully it's difficult to tame the beast in oneself.
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It was only the vulgarly mediocre that repelled her.
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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.
Ivan Turgenev
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Whatever man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself.
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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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I do not know what the heart of a bad man is like. But i do know what the heart of a good man is like. And it is terrible.
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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Whatever a person may pray for, that person prays for a miracle. Every prayer comes down to this - Almighty God, grant that two times two not equal four.
Ivan Turgenev
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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.
Ivan Turgenev