Top 180 Ivan Turgenev Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.”

— Ivan Turgenev

Featured in: New Beginnings Quotes

2. “We sit in the mud my friend and reach for the stars.”

— Ivan Turgenev

3. “I do not know what the heart of a bad man is like. But i do know what the heart of a good man is like. And it is terrible.”

— Ivan Turgenev

4. “The temerity to believe in nothing.”

— Ivan Turgenev

5. “Love, I thought, is stronger than death or the fear of death. Only by it, by love, life holds together and advances.”

— Ivan Turgenev

6. “Death doesn’t come running, but you can’t run away from it, neither; nor must you be helping it along.”

— Ivan Turgenev

7. “In my case there was no first love. I began with the second.”

— Ivan Turgenev

8. “The past was a dream wasn’t it? And who ever remembers dreams?”

— Ivan Turgenev

9. “Everyone needs help from everyone else.”

— Ivan Turgenev

10. “It’s all romanticism, nonsense, rottenness, art.”

— Ivan Turgenev

11. “Don’t force me into saying what I don’t want to say, and what I won’t say.”

— Ivan Turgenev

12. “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

13. “What’s terrible is that there’s nothing terrible, that the very essence of life is petty, uninteresting, and degradingly trite.”

— Ivan Turgenev

14. “Beware of the love of women; beware of that ecstasy – that slow poison.”

— Ivan Turgenev

15. “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

16. “Even nightingales can’t be fed on fairy tales.”

— Ivan Turgenev

17. “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

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

— Ivan Turgenev

19. “The word tomorrow was invented for indecisive people and for children.”

— Ivan Turgenev

20. “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

21. “I share no man’s opinions; I have my own.”

— Ivan Turgenev

22. “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.”

— Ivan Turgenev

23. “What I’m thinking is: here I am, lying under a haystack... The tiny little place I occupy is so small in relation to the rest of space where I am not and where it’s none of my business; and the amount of time which I’ll succeed in living is so insignificant by comparison with the eternity where I haven’t been and never will be... And yet in this atom, in this mathematical point, the blood circulates, the brain works and even desires something as well... What sheer ugliness! What sheer nonsense!”

— Ivan Turgenev

24. “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

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

— Ivan Turgenev

26. “It’s no good writing if God hasn’t given you talent. People will just laugh.”

— Ivan Turgenev

27. “Poetry is the language of the gods. I love poems myself. But poetry is not only in poems; it is diffused everywhere, it is around us. Look at those trees, that sky on all sides there is the breath of beauty, and of life, and where there is life and beauty, there is poetry also.”

— Ivan Turgenev

28. “While a man is living he is not conscious of his own life; it becomes audible to him, like a sound, after the lapse of time.”

— Ivan Turgenev

29. “Tempered, gradual animation, the methodical restrain of sensations and energies, the equilibrium of sickness and health in each creature – this is nature’s essence, its immutable law, this is what it’s based on and what it adheres to.”

— Ivan Turgenev

30. “So many memories and so little worth remembering, and in front of me – a long, long road without a goal...”

— Ivan Turgenev

31. “I look up to heaven only when I want to sneeze.”

— Ivan Turgenev

32. “What’s important is that twice two is four and all the rest’s nonsense.”

— Ivan Turgenev

33. “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.”

— Ivan Turgenev

34. “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

35. “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

36. “Nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man’s the workman in it.”

— Ivan Turgenev

37. “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.”

— Ivan Turgenev

38. “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.”

— Ivan Turgenev

39. “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!”

— Ivan Turgenev

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

— Ivan Turgenev

41. “Weak people never put an end to things themselves. They always wait for the end.”

— Ivan Turgenev

42. “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

43. “That’s what children are for – that their parents may not be bored.”

— Ivan Turgenev

44. “Great God, grant that twice two be not four.”

— Ivan Turgenev

45. “Belonging to oneself – the whole essence of life lies in that.”

— Ivan Turgenev

46. “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.”

— Ivan Turgenev

47. “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

48. “I believe love produces a certain flowering of the whole personality which nothing else can achieve...”

— Ivan Turgenev

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

— Ivan Turgenev

50. “However much you knock at nature’s door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words.”

— Ivan Turgenev