Turgenev Quotes & Sayings

Mother made sure her little kids were subjected to a strict routine. We were given a timetable which covered our every waking moment, copies of which were posted by our bedside, in the sitting room and in the kitchen. Story hour meant that mother would read us novels and short stories by Guy de Maupassant, Oscar Wilde and Edmondo de Amicis. Soon we graduated to Tolstoy, Gogol and Turgenev. She read them to us in Chinese and I never realised until much later that the writers wrote them in different European languages. Comics were absolutely forbidden and so were Enid Blyton adventures and pop music ... Lee Cyn and I soon went to a primary school nearby ... After mother's rigorous timetable, school became fun and easy-going. — Ang Swee Chai

We have a tendency to describe the human condition in lofty terms, such as a quest for freedom or striving for a virtuous life, but the life sciences hold a more mundane view: It's all about security, social companionships, and a full belly. There is obvious tension between both views, which recalls that famous dinner conversation between a Russian literary critic and the writer Ivan Turgenev: 'We haven't yet solved the problem of God,' the critic yelled, 'and you want to eat! — Frans De Waal

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. — Ivan Turgenev

And was it his destined part /
Only one moment in his life /
To be close to your heart? — Ivan Turgenev

Oh, gentle feelings, soft sounds, the goodness and the gradual stilling of a soul that has been moved; the melting happiness of the first tender, touching joys of love- where are you? — Ivan Turgenev

I did not want to know whether I was loved, and I did not want to acknowledge to myself that I was not loved; — Ivan Turgenev

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. — Ivan Turgenev

Mad people all live a long time - you know, every grief has its good side. — Ivan Turgenev

Our higher officials are fond as a rule of nonplussing their subordinates; the methods to which they have recourse to attain that end are rather various. The following means, among others, is in great vogue, 'is quite a favourite,' as the English say; a high official suddenly ceases to understand the simplest words, assuming total deafness. He will ask, for instance, What's to-day?' He is respectfully informed, 'To-day's Friday, your Ex-s-s-s-lency.' 'Eh? What? What's that? What do you say?' the great man repeats with intense attention. 'To-day's Friday, your Ex - s - s - lency.' 'Eh? What? What's Friday? What Friday?' 'Friday, your Ex - s - s - s - lency, the day of the week.' 'What, do you pretend to teach me, eh? — Ivan Turgenev

The young woman quoted Turgenev, "If you want to annoy an opponent thoroughly or even harm him, you reproach him with every defect or vice you are conscious of in yourself. — Jack Vance

The word tomorrow was invented for indecisive people and for children. — Ivan Turgenev

The appearance of mediocrity is often useful in life because it weakens tautly strung strings and sobers up people's self-confident or self-forgetful feelings, reminding them how close they are to mediocrity as well. — Ivan Turgenev

I don't see why it's impossible to express everything that's on one's mind. — Ivan Turgenev

I started out very quiet and I beat Mr. Turgenev. Then I trained hard and I beat Mr. de Maupassant. I've fought two draws with Mr. Stendhal, and I think I had an edge in the last one. But nobody's going to get me in any ring with Mr. Tolstoy unless I'm crazy or I keep getting better. — Ernest Hemingway,

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? — Ivan Turgenev

Strange things happen on this earth: you can live a long while with someone and be on the friendliest of terms, and yet you'll never once talk openly with him, from the depths of your soul; while with someone else you may scarcely have met, at one glance, whether you to him or he to you, just as in a confessional, you'll blurt out the story of your life. — Ivan Turgenev

Every day I would run to the library to get new books. Reading was a passion: I wanted to understand life. I read Dostoevsky and Brehm, Jules Verne and Turgenev, Dickens and the Zhivopisnoye Obozreniye; and the more I read, th emore I doubted everything. Lies surrounded me on all sides; one moment I wanted to run off to the Indian jungle, the next to throw a bomb at the governor-general's house on Tverskaya, the next to hang myself. — Ilya Ehrenburg

I was as happy as a fish in water, and I could have stayed in that room for ever, have never left that place. — Ivan Turgenev

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. — Ivan Turgenev

Yes" Bazarov began, "man's a strange being. When you look at a quiet, dull life, like my good parents' life here, cursorily or from a distance, you think - what could be better? Eat, drink and know you're acting in the most correct, sensible way. But that's not how it is. Boredom descends. You want to engage with people, even if just to shout at them, but still engage with them. — Ivan Turgenev

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. — Ivan Turgenev

...she knew from school that that sort of literature was boring: Gorky was correct but somehow ponderous; Mayakovsky was very correct but somehow awkward; Saltykov-Shchedrin was progressive, but you could die yawning if you tried to read him through; Turgenev was limited to his nobleman's ideals; Goncharov was associated with the beginnings of Russian capitalism; Lev Tolstoi came to favor patriarchal peasantry - and their teacher did not recommend reading Tolstoi's novels because they were very long and only confused the clear critical essays written about him. And then they reviewed a batch of writers totally unknown to anyone: Dostoyevsky, Stepnyak-Kravchinsky, and Sukhovo-Kobylin. It was true that one did not even have to remember the titles of their works. In all this long procession, only Pushkin shone like a sun. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

First love is like a revolution; the uniformly regular routine of ordered life is broken down and shattered in one instant; youth mounts the barricade, waves high its bright flag, and whatever awaits it in the future - death or a new life - all alike it goes to meet with ecstatic welcome. — Ivan Turgenev

Naturally, she had enemies. Her success, her sex, her racial origin and her bohemian extravagance reminded the puritanical why actors used to be buried in unhallowed ground. And over the decades her acting style, once so original, inevitably dated, since naturalness onstage is just as much an artifice as naturalism in the novel. If the magic always worked for some - Ellen Terry called her "transparent as an azalea" and compared her stage presence to "smoke from a burning paper" - others were less kind. Turgenev, though a Francophile and himself a dramatist, found her "false, cold, affected," and condemned her "repulsive Parisian chic. — Julian Barnes

Oh, Arkady, do me a favour, do let us for once have a really good quarrel - no holds barred, to the death." "But if we do, it'll end in..." "Blows?" Bazarov continued. "What if it does? Here, in the hay, in these idyllic surroundings, far from the world and the eyes of men - it doesn't matter. But you won't beat me. I'm going to take you now by the throat... — 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! — Ivan Turgenev

We sit in the mud ... and reach for the stars. — Ivan Turgenev

Nezhdanov's heart began to beat violently and he lowered his eyes involuntarily. This girl, who had fallen in love with a homeless wretch like him, who trusted him, who was ready to follow him, to go with him towards one and the same goal - this wonderful girl - Marianna - at that moment was, for Nezhdanov, the embodiment of everything good and just on earth; the embodiment of that love, that of a family, sister or wife, which he had not experienced; the embodiment of homeland, happiness, struggle and freedom. — Ivan Turgenev

To be young and not to know how, is bearable; to be old and not have the strength, is too great a weight to carry. And what's is so painful you can't sense your powers leaving you. It's hard for an old man to ensure such blows! — Ivan Turgenev

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. — Ivan Turgenev

I keep thinking my father gave me Turgenev, and then I realize at some point, Oh, this is a false memory. I mean, that's one of the things that interests me about memoir. It should be as much about how we remember, and that includes false memories, and the realization that one is having a false memory. That's the kind of an interesting way of layering the whole experience of recollection. — Marco Roth

We act by virtue of what we recognize as beneficial. At the present time, negation is the most beneficial of all - and we deny. — Ivan Turgenev

In his funeral oration the spokesman of the most artistic and critical of European nations, Ernest Renan, hailed him as one of the greatest writers of our times: 'The Master, whose exquisite works have charmed our century, stands more than any other man as the incarnation of a whole race,' because 'a whole world lived in him and spoke through his mouth.' Not the Russian world only, we may add, but the whole Slavonic world, to which it was 'an honour to have been expressed by so great a Master. — Ivan Turgenev

He's, he's deserted us," he stammered, "deserted us. He got bored here with us. I'm all alone in the world, like this finger, all alone!" he repeated several times and each time held out his hand in front of him, sticking out his index finger. Then Arina Vlasyevna came next to him and, laying her grey head by his, said, "what can we do, Vasya! Our son has left the nest. Like a falcon he came to us when he wanted to, and when he wanted to he flew off. And you and I sit side by side and can't move, like mushrooms on a hollow tree. Only I'll be your true one for ever and you'll be mine. — Ivan Turgenev

A man is capable of understanding everything - how the ether vibrates and what happens on the sun. But to understand how another man can blow his nose differently from the way he blows his own is something beyond his capability. — Ivan Turgenev

In a morbid condition, dreams are often distinguished by their remarkably graphic, vivid, and extremely lifelike quality. The resulting picture is sometimes monstrous, but the setting and the whole process of the presentation sometimes happen to be so probable, and with details so subtle, unexpected, yet artistically consistent with the whole fullness of the picture, that even the dreamer himself would be unable to invent them in reality, though he were as much an artist as Pushkin or Turgenev. Such dreams, morbid dreams, are always long remembered and produce a strong impression on the disturbed and already excited organism of the person.Raskolnikov had a terrible dream. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

My son,' he wrote to me, 'fear the love of woman; fear that bliss, that poison ... — Ivan Turgenev

Oh youth, youth! You don't worry about anything; you seem to possess all the treasures of the universe
even sorrow gives you pleasure, even grief suits you ... And perhaps the whole secret of your charm lies not in your ability to do everything, but in your ability to think that you will do everything. — Ivan Turgenev

That's what children are for - that their parents may not be bored. — Ivan Turgenev

I want everything or nothing. A life for a life, taking one and giving up another without hesitation and beyond recall. Or else better have nothing! — Ivan Turgenev

I've become convinced that every person should treat himself strictly and even rudely and distrustfully; it's difficult to tame the beast in oneself. — Ivan Turgenev

Every single man hangs by a thread, a bottomless pit can open beneath him any minute, and yet he still goes on thinking up unpleasantnesses for himself and making a mess of his life. — Ivan Turgenev

She tore herself away, and went out. And I went away. I cannot describe the emotion with which I went away. I should not wish it ever to come again; but I should think myself unfortunate had I never experienced such an emotion. — Ivan Turgenev

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

It's amazing how man still believes in words. For example, if you call him a fool and don't beat him, he'll be wretched. Call him a genius and don't give him any money - he'll be quite satisfied. — Ivan Turgenev

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. — Ivan Turgenev

Every man hangs by a thread, any minute the abyss may open under his feet, and yet he must go and invent for himself all kinds of troubles and spoil his life. — Ivan Turgenev

It's no good writing if God hasn't given you talent. People will just laugh. — Ivan Turgenev

Sometimes little things happen which seem nothing at all, but they hurt. — Ivan Turgenev

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. — Ivan Turgenev

You may feed the wolf as you will; he has always a hankering for the woods. — Ivan Turgenev

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. — Ivan Turgenev

A man's capable of understanding anything - how the ether vibrates, and what's going on in the sun - but how any other man can blow his nose differently from him, that he's incapable of understanding. — Ivan Turgenev

It's fun talking to you ... like walking on the edge of a precipice. At first one's nervous but then courage takes over from somewhere. — Ivan Turgenev

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. — Ivan Turgenev

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

If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin. — Ivan Turgenev

A son is like a lopped off branch. As a falcon he comes when he wills and goes where he lists. — Ivan Turgenev

Illness isn't the only thing that spoils the appetite. — Ivan Turgenev

I look up to heaven only when I want to sneeze. — Ivan Turgenev

But the old 1840s split between the religious, patriotic, Slavophile establishment and the progressive, humane, revolutionary Westernizers was giving way to the exacerbated conflict between the alienated positivist radicals of the 1860s who adopted the name Turgenev had given them, Nihilists, and those who thanked Russian Nationalism, Orthodoxy and Autocracy for the bloodless liberation of the serfs, introduction of trial by jury, reduction of the draft from twenty-five to five years, partial decentralization of — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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. — Ivan Turgenev

Take for yourself what you can, and don't be ruled by others; to belong to oneself - the whole savour of life lies in that. — Ivan Turgenev

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

Fathers and Sons
Arkaday watching Katya's face as she accepts his marriage proposal:
Anyone who has never seen such tears in the eyes of a beloved one cannot fathom to what extent, all overcome with gratitude and shame, a human being can be happy on earth.
Bazarov on his death bed:
I am done for. I've fallen under the wheel. And it transpires that there was no point in thinking about the future. It's an old story, is death, but to every man it comes anew. — Ivan Turgenev

Beware of the love of women; beware of that ecstasy - that slow poison. — Ivan Turgenev

Was coming to that troubled twilight time, a time of regrets that resemble hopes, of hopes that resemble regrets, when youth is past but old age has not yet come. — Ivan Turgenev

Turgenev was a very serious fellow but he could make me laugh because a truth first encountered can be very funny. When someone else's truth is the same as your truth, and he seems to be saying it just for you, that's great. — Charles Bukowski

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

Woe to the heart that has not loved in youth! — Ivan Turgenev

It's all romanticism, nonsense, rottenness, art. — Ivan Turgenev

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. — Ivan Turgenev

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. — Ivan Turgenev

From lips indifferent of her death I heard,
Indifferently I listened to it, too,'
were echoing in my heart. O youth, youth! little dost thou care for anything; thou art master, as it were, of all the treasures of the universe - even sorrow gives thee pleasure, even grief thou canst turn to thy profit; thou art self-confident and insolent; thou sayest, 'I alone am living - look you!' - but thy days fly by all the while, and vanish without trace or reckoning; and everything in thee vanishes, like wax in the sun, like snow ... . And, perhaps, the whole secret of thy charm lies, not in being able to do anything, but in being able to think thou wilt do anything; lies just in thy throwing to the winds, forces which thou couldst not make other use of; in each of us gravely regarding himself as a prodigal, gravely supposing that he is justified in saying, 'Oh, what might I not have done if I had not wasted my time! — Ivan Turgenev

It was only the vulgarly mediocre that repelled her. — Ivan Turgenev

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

In his heart he was highly delighted with his friend's suggestion, but he thought it a duty to conceal his feeling. He was not a nihilist for nothing! — Ivan Turgenev

Turgenev saw human beings as individuals always endowed with consciousness, character, feelings, and moral strengths and weaknesses; Marx saw them always as snowflakes in an avalanche, as instances of general forces, as not yet fully human because utterly conditioned by their circumstances. Where Turgenev saw men, Marx saw classes of men; where Turgenev saw people, Marx saw the People. These two ways of looking at the world persist into our own time and profoundly affect, for better or for worse, the solutions we propose to our social problems. — Theodore Dalrymple

Traces of human life vanish very quickly: Glafira Petrovna's estate had not yet gone wild, but it seemed already to have sunk into that quiet repose which possesses everything on earth wherever there is no restless human infection to affect it. — Ivan Turgenev

People without firmness of character love to make up a fate for themselves; that relieves them of the necessity of having their own will and of taking responsibility for themselves. — Ivan Turgenev

We did it!" I said, feeling limp with relief. "It actually worked!"
Dr. Turgenev rubbed his forehead. "I had very big doubts."
"Big doubts?" I said weakly.
The Russian scientist shrugged. "I am pessimist," he said. — Kenneth Oppel

As we all know, time sometimes flies like a bird, and sometimes
crawls like a worm, but people may be unusually happy when they do not
even notice whether time has passed quickly or slowly — Ivan Turgenev

Every man's happiness is built on the unhappi-ness of another. — Ivan Turgenev

What a magnificent body, how I should like to see it on the dissecting table. — Ivan Turgenev

Death's an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew. — Ivan Turgenev

I believe love produces a certain flowering of the whole personality which nothing else can achieve ... — Ivan Turgenev

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. — Ivan Turgenev

In a morbid condition of the brain, dreams often have a singular actuality, vividness, and extraordinary semblance of reality. At times monstrous images are created, but the setting and the whole picture are so truthlike and filled with details so delicate, so unexpectedly, but so artistically consistent, that the dreamer, were he an artist like Pushkin or Turgenev even, could never have invented them in the waking state. Such sick dreams always remain long in the memory and make a powerful impression on the overwrought and deranged nervous system. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

But like a boat with a twisted rudder, I kept coming back to the same place. I wasn't going anywhere. I was myself, waiting on the shore for me to return.
Was that so depressing?
Who knows? Maybe that was 'despair.' What Turgenev called 'disillusionment.' Or Dostoyevsky, 'hell.' Or Somerset Maugham, 'reality.' Whatever the label, I figured it was me. — Haruki Murakami

Everyone needs help from everyone else. — Ivan Turgenev

I must say, though, that a man who has staked his whole life on the card of a woman's love and who, when that card is trumped, falls to pieces and lets himself go to the dogs
a fellow like that is not a man, not a male. You say he's unhappy
you know best. But all the nonsense hasn't been taken out of him yet. I'm sure he really believes he's a smart fellow just because he reads that rag Galignani and saves a muzhik from a flogging once a month. — Ivan Turgenev

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. — Ivan Turgenev

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

Both men felt uncomfortable. Each knew the other understood him. That kind of knowledge is agreeable for friends, and for enemies very disagreeable, especially when they can't either have it out or separate. — Ivan Turgenev

Go and try to disprove death. Death will disprove you, and that's all! — Ivan Turgenev

We're young, we're not monsters, no fools: we'll conquer happiness for ourselves. — Ivan Turgenev

I could not simplify myself.
(From the suicide note of a character named Nejdanov) — Ivan Turgenev

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. — Ivan Turgenev

This is the only thing that makes life worth living. If you have succeeded in doing something you wanted to do, something that seemed impossible - well, then, make the most of it, with all your heart, to the very brim. — Ivan Turgenev

I assure you, Alexandra Pavlovna,' said Pigasov slowly, 'nothing can be worse and more injurious than good-fortune that comes too late. It cannot give you pleasure in any way, and it deprives you of the right
the precious right
of complaining and cursing Providence. Yes, madam, it's a cruel and insulting trick
belated fortune. — Ivan Turgenev