Explore Quotes by Ivan Turgenev

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.

A poet must be a psychologist, but a secret one: he should know and feel the roots of phenomena but present only the phenomena themselves in full bloom or as they fade away.

Time, as is well known, sometimes flies like a bird and sometimes crawls like a worm, but human beings are generally particularly happy when they don't notice whether it's passing quickly or slowly.

However much you knock at nature's door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words.

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.

In the end, nature is inexorable: it has no reason to hurry and, sooner or later, it takes what belongs to it. Unconsciously and inflexibly obedient to its own laws, it doesn't know art, just as it doesn't know freedom, just as it doesn't know goodness.

We sit in the mud... and reach for the stars.

Circumstances define us; they force us onto one road or another, and then they punish us for it.

Love, I thought, is stronger than death or the fear of death. Only by it, by love, life holds together and advances.

Nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man's the workman in it.

He went to bed early, but could not fall asleep. He was haunted by sad and gloomy reflections about the inevitable end- death. These thoughts were familiar to him, many times had he turned them over this way and that, first shuddering at the probability of annihilation, then welcoming it, almost rejoicing in it. Suddenly a peculiarly familiar agitation took possession of him... He mused awhile, sat down at the table, and wrote down the following lines in his sacred copy-book, without a single correction.

Ah, but in time the heat of noontide passes, and to it there succeed nightfall and dusk, with a return to the quiet fold where for the weary an the heavy-laden there waits sleep, sweet sleep.

Everyone needs help from everyone else.

I do not know what the heart of a bad man is like. But i do know what the heart of a good man is like. And it is terrible.

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.

In days of doubt, in days of dreary musings on my country's fate, you alone are my comfort and support, oh great, powerful, righteous, and free Russian language!

Most people can't understand how others can blow their noses differently than they do.

I only know that I feel tired, antiquated; I feel as though I had been living a long, long time.

The people who bind themselves to systems are those who are unable to encompass the whole truth and try to catch it by the tail; a system is like the tail of truth, but truth is like a lizard; it leaves its tail in your fingers and runs away knowing full well that it will grow a new one in a twinkling.

I agree with no one's opinion. I have some of my own.

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.