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

More quotes by Ivan Turgenev

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Illness isn't the only thing that spoils the appetite.
Ivan Turgenev
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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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I agree with no one's opinion. I have some of my own.
Ivan Turgenev
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It was only the vulgarly mediocre that repelled her.
Ivan Turgenev
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Whatever man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself.
Ivan Turgenev
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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.
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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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.
Ivan Turgenev
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We’re young, we’re not monsters, no fools: we’ll conquer happiness for ourselves.
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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Great God, grant that twice two be not four.
Ivan Turgenev
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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.
Ivan Turgenev
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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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Who among us has the strength to oppose petty egoism, those petty good feelings, pity and remorse?
Ivan Turgenev
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In my case there was no first love. I began with the second.
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
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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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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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The temerity to believe in nothing.
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