Ivan Turgenev
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?Collection: First Love
We’re young, we’re not monsters, no fools: we’ll conquer happiness for ourselves.Collection: Monsters
Anyone who has crossed from the district of Bolkhov into that of Zhizdra will probably have been struck by the sharp difference between the natives of the provinces of Orel and Kaluga.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Sweet
To tell about a drunken muzhik's beating his wife is incomparably harder than to compose a whole tract about the 'woman question.'Collection: Wife
A son is like a lopped off branch. As a falcon he comes when he wills and goes where he lists.Collection: Children
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.Collection: Stars
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.Collection: Cake
As for work, without it, without painstaking work, any writer or artist definitely remains a dilettante; there's no point in waiting for so-called blissful moments, for inspiration; if it comes, so much the better--but you keep working anyway.Collection: Inspirational
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?Collection: Fall
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.Collection: Rivers
I'm through with Tolstoy. He has ceased to exist for me.... If I eat a bowl of soup and like it, I know by that fact alone and with absolute certainty that Tolstoy will find it bad, and vice versa.Collection: Vices
Art, if one employs this term in the broad sense that includes poetry within its realm, is an art of creation laden with ideals, located at the very core of the life of a people, defining the spiritual and moral shape of that life.Collection: Spiritual
I was as happy as a fish in water, and I could have stayed in that room for ever, have never left that place.Collection: Water
The fact is that previously they were simply dunces and now they've suddenly become nihilists.Collection: Facts
I only know that I feel tired, antiquated; I feel as though I had been living a long, long time.Collection: Tired
We Russians have assigned ourselves no other task in life but the cultivation of our own personalities, and when we're barely past childhood, we set to work to cultivate them, those unfortunate personalities.Collection: Past
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.Collection: Book
I walked in the meadows of green grieving for my life.Collection: Grieving
Whereas I think: I’m lying here in a haystack... The tiny space I occupy is so infinitesimal in comparison with the rest of space, which I don’t occupy and which has no relation to me. And the period of time in which I’m fated to live is so insignificant beside the eternity in which I haven’t existed and won’t exist... And yet in this atom, this mathematical point, blood is circulating, a brain is working, desiring something... What chaos! What a farce!Collection: Lying
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!Collection: Fate
It was only the vulgarly mediocre that repelled her.Collection: Mediocre
Illness isn't the only thing that spoils the appetite.Collection: Food
Sternly, remorselessly, fate guides each of us; only at the beginning, when we're absorbed in details, in all sorts of nonsense, in ourselves, are we unaware of its harsh hand.Collection: Ignorance
Behind me there are already so many memories (...) Lots of memories, but no point in remembering them, and ahead of me a long, long road with nothing to aim for ... I just don't want to go along it.Collection: Memories
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.Collection: Feet
I was afraid of looking into my heart...afraid of thinking seriously about anything...I did not want to know whether I was loved, and I did not want to admit to myself that I was not loved.Collection: Heart
What's important is that twice two is four and all the rest's nonsense.Collection: Two
What's terrible is that there's nothing terrible, that the very essence of life is petty, uninteresting, and degradingly trite.Collection: Life
In my case there was no first love. I began with the second.Collection: First Love
That's what children are for—that their parents may not be bored.Collection: Children
Go and try to disprove death. Death will disprove you, and that's all!Collection: Death
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.Collection: Friendship
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.Collection: Self
There's only one way for an individual to remain upright, not to fall to pieces, not to sink into the mire of self-oblivionorself-contempt. That's calmly to turn away from everything, to say, "Enough!" and, folding one's useless arms across one's empty breast, to retain the ultimate, the sole attainable virtue, the virtue of recognizing one's own insignificance.Collection: Fall
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 wheelCollection: Nature
Everyone needs help from everyone else.Collection: Inspiration
I don't see why it's impossible to express everything that's on one's mind.Collection: Mind
So many memories and so little worth remembering, and in front of me - a long, long road without a goal.Collection: Memories
I look up to heaven only when I want to sneeze.Collection: Heaven
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.Collection: Life
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.Collection: Dream
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.Collection: Feelings
The past was a dream wasn't it? And who ever remembers dreams?Collection: Dream
I share no man's opinions; I have my own.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Song
I never started from ideas but always from character.Collection: Writing
Significance is sweet.Collection: Sweet