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

More quotes by 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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What a magnificent body, how I should like to see it on the dissecting table.
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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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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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?
Ivan Turgenev
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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.
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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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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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
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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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We’re young, we’re not monsters, no fools: we’ll conquer happiness for ourselves.
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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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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I don't see why it's impossible to express everything that's on one's mind.
Ivan Turgenev
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Illness isn't the only thing that spoils the appetite.
Ivan Turgenev
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Nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man's the workman in it.
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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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
Ivan Turgenev
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Sternly, remorselessly, fate guides each of us only at the beginning, when we're absorbed in details, in all sorts of nonsense, in ourselves, are we unaware of its harsh hand.
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