Ivan Turgenev Quotes

Most popular Ivan Turgenev Quotes

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

nature answers

To desire and expect nothing for oneself–and to have profound sympathy for others–is genuine holiness. - Ivan Turgenev quote.
To desire and expect nothing for oneself–and to have profound sympathy for others–is genuine holiness.
— Ivan Turgenev

sympathy

Whatever a man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself to this: "Great God, grant that twice two be not four." - Ivan Turgenev quote.
Whatever a man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself to this: "Great God, grant that twice two be not four."
— Ivan Turgenev Poems in Prose

prayer

Nature cares nothing for our logic, our human logic; she has her own, which we do not recognize and do not acknowledge until we are crunched under its wheel. - Ivan Turgenev quote.
Nature cares nothing for our logic, our human logic; she has her own, which we do not recognize and do not acknowledge until we are crunched under its wheel.
— Ivan Turgenev

nature

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 quote.
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 The Essential Turgenev

poets

Death is like a fisherman who has caught a fish in his net and leaves it for a time in the water: the fish still swims about, but the net surrounds it, and the fisherman will take it when he wishes. - Ivan Turgenev quote.
Death is like a fisherman who has caught a fish in his net and leaves it for a time in the water: the fish still swims about, but the net surrounds it, and the fisherman will take it when he wishes.
— Ivan Turgenev On the Eve: A Novel

death