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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

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

More quotes by 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
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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.
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Every man's happiness is built on the unhappi-ness of another.
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Circumstances define us they force us onto one road or another, and then they punish us for it.
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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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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 don't see why it's impossible to express everything that's on one's mind.
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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.
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Death's an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew.
Ivan Turgenev
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We sit in the mud... and reach for the stars.
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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.
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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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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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.
Ivan Turgenev
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Great God, grant that twice two be not four.
Ivan Turgenev
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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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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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What's important is that twice two is four and all the rest's nonsense.
Ivan Turgenev
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Even nightingales can’t be fed on fairy tales.
Ivan Turgenev