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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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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
Called
Sentiment
Rich
Barely
Future
Sigh
Hope
Sentiments
Firsts
Rising
Mournful
First
Instant
Foresee
Love
Forth
Phantom
Expect
Phantoms

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Nothing is worse and more hurtful than a happiness that comes too late.
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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.
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Belonging to oneself--the whole essence of life lies in that.
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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.
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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?
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In my case there was no first love. I began with the second.
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Each individual is more or less dimly aware of his significance, is aware that he's something innately superior, something eternal--and lives, is obligated to live, in the moment and for the moment.
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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.
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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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Don't force me into saying what I don't want to say, and what I won't say.
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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.
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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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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?
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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.
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Nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man's the workman in it.
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It's all romanticism, nonsense, rottenness, art.
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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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What a magnificent body, how I should like to see it on the dissecting table.
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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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There is a sweetness in being the sole source, the autocratic and irresponsible cause of the greatest joy and profoundest pain to another.
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