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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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Go forward while you can, but if your strength fails you, sit down near the road and gaze without anger or envy at those who pass by. They don't have far to go, either.
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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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It's all romanticism, nonsense, rottenness, art.
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I don't see why it's impossible to express everything that's on one's mind.
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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
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I agree with no one's opinion. I have some of my own.
Ivan Turgenev
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Even nightingales can’t be fed on fairy tales.
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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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.
Ivan Turgenev
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Belonging to oneself--the whole essence of life lies in that.
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.
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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What a magnificent body, how I should like to see it on the dissecting table.
Ivan Turgenev
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I was afraid of looking into my heart...afraid of thinking seriously about anything...I did not want to know whether I was loved, and I did not want to admit to myself that I was not loved.
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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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.
Ivan Turgenev
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A withered maple leaf has left its branch and is falling to the ground its movements resemble those of a butterfly in flight. Isn't it strange? The saddest and deadest of things is yet so like the gayest and most vital of creatures?
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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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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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