Quote

All human beings hang by a thread, an abyss may open under their feet at any moment, and yet they have to go and invent all sortsof difficulties for themselves and spoil their lives.

Ivan Turgenev

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Feet
Abyss
Open
Invent
Moment
Difficulties
Lives
Thread
Moments
Hang
May
Disaster
Human
Difficulty
Discontent
Humans
Beings
Spoil

More quotes by Ivan Turgenev

Image
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
Image
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.
Ivan Turgenev
Image
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
Image
What's terrible is that there's nothing terrible, that the very essence of life is petty, uninteresting, and degradingly trite.
Ivan Turgenev
Image
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.
Ivan Turgenev
Image
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.
Ivan Turgenev
Image
I agree with no one's opinion. I have some of my own.
Ivan Turgenev
Image
Whatever man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself.
Ivan Turgenev
Image
Circumstances define us they force us onto one road or another, and then they punish us for it.
Ivan Turgenev
Image
I only know that I feel tired, antiquated I feel as though I had been living a long, long time.
Ivan Turgenev
Image
The temerity to believe in nothing.
Ivan Turgenev
Image
We’re young, we’re not monsters, no fools: we’ll conquer happiness for ourselves.
Ivan Turgenev
Image
Belonging to oneself--the whole essence of life lies in that.
Ivan Turgenev
Image
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
Image
Great God, grant that twice two be not four.
Ivan Turgenev
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Ivan Turgenev
Image
That's what children are for—that their parents may not be bored.
Ivan Turgenev
Image
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