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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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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
Demands
Doesn
Gifts
Serenely
Nothing
Demand
Deceives
Life
Except
Accepts
Accepting
Contemplate
Everyone
Deceiving
Contemplating
Individual
Deception
Makes

More quotes by Ivan Turgenev

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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.
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I walked in the meadows of green grieving for my life.
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Illness isn't the only thing that spoils the appetite.
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We sit in the mud... and reach for the stars.
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Belonging to oneself--the whole essence of life lies in that.
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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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Go and try to disprove death. Death will disprove you, and that's all!
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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.
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Whatever man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself.
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The temerity to believe in nothing.
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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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What a magnificent body, how I should like to see it on the dissecting table.
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Even nightingales can’t be fed on fairy tales.
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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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It's all romanticism, nonsense, rottenness, art.
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Every man's happiness is built on the unhappi-ness of another.
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Who among us has the strength to oppose petty egoism, those petty good feelings, pity and remorse?
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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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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.
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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