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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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We sit in the mud... and reach for the stars.
Ivan Turgenev
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Go and try to disprove death. Death will disprove you, and that's all!
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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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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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?
Ivan Turgenev
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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.
Ivan Turgenev
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I walked in the meadows of green grieving for my life.
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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Love, I thought, is stronger than death or the fear of death. Only by it, by love, life holds together and advances.
Ivan Turgenev
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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.
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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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
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What a magnificent body, how I should like to see it on the dissecting table.
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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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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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
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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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Death's an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew.
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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Bazarov drew himself up haughtily. I don't adopt any one's ideas I have my own.
Ivan Turgenev