IVAN TURGENEV

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.

The word tomorrow was invented for indecisive people and for children.

One may speak about anything on earth with fire, with enthusiasm, with ecstasy, but one only speaks about oneself with avidity.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Women... can't live with 'em... can't shoot 'em.

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

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!

To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.

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

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

Life deceives everyone except the individual who doesn't contemplate it, the individual who demands nothing from it, the individual who serenely accepts its few gifts and serenely makes the most of them.

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

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.

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

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