A close, daily intimacy between two people has to be paid for: it requires a great deal of experience of life, logic, and warmth of heart on both sid…

- Ivan Goncharov

Yesterday one has wished, to-day one attains the madly longed-for object, and to-morrow one will blush to think that one ever desired it.

- Ivan Goncharov

When you don't know what you're living for, you don't care how you live from one day to the next. You're happy the day has passed and the night has c…

- Ivan Goncharov

It is a trick among the dishonest to offer sacrifices that are not needed, or not possible, to avoid making those that are required.

- Ivan Goncharov

Memories are the height of poetry only when they are memories of happiness. When they graze wounds over which scars have formed they become an aching…

- Ivan Goncharov

I expected so much from life and if I had not seen it so close, I would to this day be expecting something. What treasures I discovered in my own sou…

- Ivan Goncharov

The trouble is that no devastating or redeeming fires have ever burnt in my life.... My life began by flickering out.

- Ivan Goncharov