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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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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
Life
Trite
Uninteresting
Futility
Alienation
Petty
Essence
Terrible
Nothing

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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.
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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.
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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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Every man's happiness is built on the unhappi-ness of another.
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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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Great God, grant that twice two be not four.
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Illness isn't the only thing that spoils the appetite.
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That's what children are for—that their parents may not be bored.
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Nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man's the workman in it.
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What's important is that twice two is four and all the rest's nonsense.
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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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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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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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The temerity to believe in nothing.
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I agree with no one's opinion. I have some of my own.
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In my case there was no first love. I began with the second.
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What did I hope for, what did I expect, what rich future did I foresee, when the phantom of my first love, rising up for an instant, barely called forth one sigh, one mournful sentiment?
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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.
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What a magnificent body, how I should like to see it on the dissecting table.
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Whatever man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself.
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