Quotes from Ivan Turgenev

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!

I share no man's opinions; I have my own.

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.

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

I am a flirt: I have no heart: I have an actor's nature.

Nature creates while destroying, and doesn't care whether it creates or destroys as long as life isn't extinguished, as long as death doesn't lose its rights.

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

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.

That is what poetry can do. It speaks to us of what does not exist, which is not only better than what exists, but even more like the truth.

The temerity to believe in nothing.

Great God, grant that twice two be not four.

Who among us has the strength to oppose petty egoism, those petty good feelings, pity and remorse?

Nothing is worse and more hurtful than a happiness that comes too late.

Nothing is worse and more hurtful than a happiness that comes too late. It can give no pleasure, yet it deprives you of that most precious of rights - the right to swear and curse at your fate!

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.

Whatever man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself.

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.

He was the soul of politeness to everyone -- to some with a hint of aversion, to others with a hint of respect.

There are some moments in life, some feelings; one can only point to them and pass by.

Time sometimes flies like a bird, sometimes crawls like a snail; but a man is happiest when he does not even notice whether it passes swiftly or slowly.

Belonging to oneself--the whole essence of life lies in that.

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.

What's terrible is that there's nothing terrible, that the very essence of life is petty, uninteresting, and degradingly trite.

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.