Ivan S. Turgenev
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (Cyrillic: Иван Сергеевич Тургенев) was a novelist, poet, and dramatist, and now ranks as one of the towering figures of Russian literature. His major works include the short-story collection A Sportsman’s Sketches (1852) and the novels Rudin (1856), Home of the Gentry (1859), On the Eve (1860), and Fathers and Sons (1862).
These works offer realistic, affectionate portrayals of the Russian peasantry and penetrating studies of the Russian intelligentsia who were attempting to move the country into a new age. His masterpiece, Fathers and Sons, is considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century.
Turgenev was a contemporary with Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy. While these wrote about church and religion, Turgenev was more concerned with the movement toward social reform in Russia.
“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!”
“I don't see why it's impossible to express everything that's on one's mind.”
“Behind me there are already so many memories (...) Lots of memories, but no point in remembering them, and ahead of me a long, long road with nothing to aim for ... I just don't want to go along it.”
“She found it sinful and expensive to have sugar in her tea, although she herself never spent a penny on anything.”
“It was only the vulgarly mediocre that repelled her.”
“He was the soul of politeness to everyone -- to some with a hint of aversion, to others with a hint of respect. ”
“His little eyes, which looked as if they'd literally been hammered into place, gazed out fixedly and uncomfortably, and he also had a way of laughing uncomfortably with an abrupt, wooden laugh.”
“What's important is that twice two is four and all the rest's nonsense.”
“The fact is that previously they were simply dunces and now they've suddenly become nihilists.”
“First we've got to clear the ground.”
“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!”
“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.”