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

More quotes by 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.
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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Love, I thought, is stronger than death or the fear of death. Only by it, by love, life holds together and advances.
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
Ivan Turgenev
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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.
Ivan Turgenev
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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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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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Belonging to oneself--the whole essence of life lies in that.
Ivan Turgenev
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It was only the vulgarly mediocre that repelled her.
Ivan Turgenev
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Youth eats all the sugared fancy cakes and regards them as its daily bread. But there'll come a time when you'll start asking just for a crust.
Ivan Turgenev
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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.
Ivan Turgenev
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Whatever man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself.
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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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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Great God, grant that twice two be not four.
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.
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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Nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man's the workman in it.
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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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?
Ivan Turgenev