Top 180 Ivan Turgenev Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “However much you knock at nature’s door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words.”

— Ivan Turgenev

52. “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?”

— Ivan Turgenev

53. “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.”

— Ivan Turgenev

54. “Only one thing bothered me: at this very moment, as they say, of inexplicable bliss there would be a sinking feeling at the pit of my stomach and my abdomen would be assailed by a melancholy, cold shivering. In the end I couldn’t abide such happiness and ran away.”

— Ivan Turgenev

55. “Most people can’t understand how others can blow their noses differently than they do.”

— Ivan Turgenev

56. “Nowhere does time pass as swiftly as in Russia, though they say that in prison it passes even more quickly.”

— Ivan Turgenev

57. “Whatever man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself...”

— Ivan Turgenev

58. “It was only the vulgarly mediocre that repelled her.”

— Ivan Turgenev

59. “Nothing is worse and more hurtful than a happiness that comes too late.”

— Ivan Turgenev

60. “What a magnificent body, how I should like to see it on the dissecting table.”

— Ivan Turgenev

61. “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

62. “Sometimes little things happen which seem nothing at all, but they hurt.”

— Ivan Turgenev

63. “Oh, sweet emotions, gentle harmony, goodness and peace of the softened heart, melting bliss of the first raptures of love, where are they, where are they?”

— Ivan Turgenev

64. “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

65. “We’re young, we’re not monsters, no fools: we’ll conquer happiness for ourselves.”

— Ivan Turgenev

66. “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.”

— Ivan Turgenev

67. “To tell about a drunken muzhik’s beating his wife is incomparably harder than to compose a whole tract about the ‘woman question.’”

— Ivan Turgenev

68. “I am a flirt: I have no heart: I have an actor’s nature.”

— Ivan Turgenev

69. “Death’s an old story, but new for each person.”

— Ivan Turgenev

70. “It seemed to us that all people to a greater or lesser degree belong to one of these two types, that almost every one of us resembles either Don Quixote or Hamlet.”

— Ivan Turgenev

71. “Death’s an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew.”

— Ivan Turgenev

72. “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

73. “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.”

— Ivan Turgenev

74. “I don’t see why it’s impossible to express everything that’s on one’s mind.”

— Ivan Turgenev

75. “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

76. “Victims of misfortune are quick to sense another of their kind from a distance, but in old age they rarely become friends, which is in no way surprising: they have nothing to share together – not even hope.”

— Ivan Turgenev

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

— Ivan Turgenev

78. “And now, when the shades of evening begin to steal over my life, what have I left fresher, more precious, than the memories of the storm – so soon over – of early morning, of spring?”

— Ivan Turgenev

79. “But are those prayers of theirs, those tears, all fruitless? Is their love, their hallowed selfless love, not omnipotent? Oh Yes! however passionate, sinful and rebellious the heart hidden in the tomb, the flowers growing over it peep at us serenely with their innocent eyes; they speak to us not only of eternal peace, of the vast repose of ‘indifferent’ nature: they tell us, too, of everlasting reconciliation and of life which has no end.”

— Ivan Turgenev

80. “I had no first love,′ he said at last; ‘I began with the second.”

— Ivan Turgenev

81. “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

82. “He who hasn’t seen such tears in the eyes of a beloved hasn’t yet experienced the full degree of happiness a man can have on this Earth, overcome by gratitude and shame.”

— Ivan Turgenev

83. “The fact is that previously they were simply dunces and now they’ve suddenly become nihilists.”

— Ivan Turgenev

84. “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

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

— Ivan Turgenev

86. “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

87. “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

88. “A son is like a lopped off branch. As a falcon he comes when he wills and goes where he lists.”

— Ivan Turgenev

89. “Why is it that when one is enjoying, say, a piece of music, or a beautiful summer evening, or a conversation with a sympathetic companion, the occasion seems rather a hint at an infinite felicity existent elsewhere than a real felicity actually being experienced?”

— Ivan Turgenev

90. “Why is it that even when we are enjoying music, for example, or a fine evening or conversation with people we like, why does it all seem to be a hint of some limitless happiness existing somewhere else rather than a real happiness, the kind, that is, we possess ourselves?”

— Ivan Turgenev

91. “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

92. “All smoke and steam... all seems for ever changing, on all sides new forms, phantoms flying after phantoms, while in reality it is all the same and the same again; everything hurrying, flying towards something, and everything vanishing without a trace, attaining to nothing.”

— Ivan Turgenev

93. “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

94. “No! I cannot love people whom I find that I look down on. I need someone who would himself master me, but then, goodness me, I shall never come across anyone like that. I will never fall into anybody’s clutches, never, never.”

— Ivan Turgenev

95. “Every man’s happiness is built on the unhappi-ness of another.”

— Ivan Turgenev

96. “He was the soul of politeness to everyone – to some with a hint of aversion, to others with a hint of respect.”

— Ivan Turgenev

97. “I? Believe me, Zinaida Alexandrovna, that whatever you did, however much you make me suffer, I shall love you and adore you to the end of my days.”

— Ivan Turgenev

98. “First we’ve got to clear the ground.”

— Ivan Turgenev

99. “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.”

— Ivan Turgenev

100. “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