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Even nightingales can’t be fed on fairy tales.

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
Nightingales
Feds
Fairy
Tales
Even

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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?
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What a magnificent body, how I should like to see it on the dissecting table.
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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.
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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.
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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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Whatever man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself.
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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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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.
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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.
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Who among us has the strength to oppose petty egoism, those petty good feelings, pity and remorse?
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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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Illness isn't the only thing that spoils the appetite.
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I walked in the meadows of green grieving for my life.
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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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We sit in the mud... and reach for the stars.
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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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What's terrible is that there's nothing terrible, that the very essence of life is petty, uninteresting, and degradingly trite.
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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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In my case there was no first love. I began with the second.
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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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