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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
Futility
Alienation
Petty
Essence
Terrible
Nothing
Life
Trite
Uninteresting

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We sit in the mud... and reach for the stars.
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It was only the vulgarly mediocre that repelled her.
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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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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 is not a temple, but a workshop, and man's the workman in it.
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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.
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What a magnificent body, how I should like to see it on the dissecting table.
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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.
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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.
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Nothing is worse and more hurtful than a happiness that comes too late.
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We’re young, we’re not monsters, no fools: we’ll conquer happiness for ourselves.
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Whatever man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself.
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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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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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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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Illness isn't the only thing that spoils the appetite.
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The word tomorrow was invented for indecisive people and for children.
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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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Take what you can yourself, and don't let others get you into their hands to belong to oneself, that is the whole thing in life.
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I believe love produces a certain flowering of the whole personality which nothing else can achieve.
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