Ivan Turgenev

“Good-bye,' he said with sudden force, and his eyes gleamed with their last light. 'Good-bye.... Listen ... you know I didn't kiss you then.... Breathe on the dying lamp, and let it go out ...”

“Well, what had I to say to you ... I loved you! there was no sense in that even before, and less than ever now. Love is a form, and my own form is already breaking up. Better say how lovely you are! And now here you stand, so beautiful ...”

“Again his dead wife came back to his imagination, but not as he had known her for many years, not as the good domestic housewife, but as a young girl with a slim figure, innocently inquiring eyes, and a tight twist of hair on her childish neck. He remembered how he had seen her for the first time. He was still a student then. He had met her on the staircase of his lodgings, and, jostling by accident against her, he tried to apologise, and could only mutter, 'Pardon, monsieur,' while she bowed, smiled, and suddenly seemed frightened, and ran away, though at the bend of the staircase she had glanced rapidly at him, assumed a serious air, and blushed. Afterwards, the first timid visits, the half-words, the half-smiles, and embarrassment; and melancholy, and yearnings, and at last that breathing rapture.... Where had it all vanished? She had been his wife, he had been happy as few on earth are happy.... 'But,' he mused, 'these sweet first moments, why could one not live an eternal, undying life in them?”

“caprice and irresponsibility… .Those two words sum you up; your whole nature’s contained in thosetwo words.”

“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.”

“First love is like a revolution; the uniformly regular routine of ordered life is broken down and shattered in one instant; youth mounts the barricade, waves high its bright flag, and whatever awaits it in the future - death or a new life - all alike it goes to meet with ecstatic welcome.”

“Every man hangs by a thread, any minute the abyss may open under his feet, and yet he must go and invent for himself all kinds of troubles and spoil his life.”

“But I think that I have already been moving too long in a sphere which is not my own. Flying fishes can hold out for a time in the air, but soon they must splash back into the water; allow me, too, to paddle in my own element.”

“Arkardy went on,with the air of a man who has got into a bog,feels that he is sinking further and further in every step, and yet hurries onwards in the hope of crossing it as soon as possible”

“My son,' he wrote to me, 'fear the love of woman; fear that bliss, that poison....”

“She tore herself away, and went out. And I went away. I cannot describe the emotion with which I went away. I should not wish it ever to come again; but I should think myself unfortunate had I never experienced such an emotion.”

“I burnt as in a fire in her presence ... but what did I care to know what the fire was in which I burned and melted--it was enough that it was sweet to burn and melt.”

“The enchanted world arising out of the dim mists of the past, into which he just stepped, quivered-and disappeared.”

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

“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.”

“He went to bed early, but could not fall asleep. He was haunted by sad and gloomy reflections about the inevitable end— death. These thoughts were familiar to him, many times had he turned them over this way and that, first shuddering at the probability of annihilation, then welcoming it, almost rejoicing in it. Suddenly a peculiarly familiar agitation took possession of him… He mused awhile, sat down at the table, and wrote down the following lines in his sacred copy-book, without a single correction:”

“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.”

“You are an old pig!'one of them said to the other. 'And that is worse than being a young one.”

“Run along, my friend, Andrei Petrovitch, put a hat on your learned head, and let us go where our eyes lead us. Our eyes are young--they may lead us far.”

“In his funeral oration the spokesman of the most artistic and critical of European nations, Ernest Renan, hailed him as one of the greatest writers of our times: ‘The Master, whose exquisite works have charmed our century, stands more than any other man as the incarnation of a whole race,’ because ‘a whole world lived in him and spoke through his mouth.’ Not the Russian world only, we may add, but the whole Slavonic world, to which it was ‘an honour to have been expressed by so great a Master.”

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

“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.”

“...pe atunci traiam fara grija, faceam ce voiam, infloream, intr-un cuvant. Pe atunci nu-mi trecea prin cap ca omul nu e o planta si ca nu poate inflori multa vreme.”

“Yes," he said, without looking at anyone; "it's a misfortune to live five years in the country like this, far from the mighty intellects! You turn into a fool directly. You may try not to forget what you've been taught, but -in a snap!- they'll prove all that's rubbish, and tell you that sensible men have nothing more to do with such foolishness, and that you, if you please, are an antiquated old fogey. What's to be done? Young people, of course, are cleverer than we are!”

“a person who gets angry at his own illness is sure to overcome it”

“There was nothing ugly in the small, unprepossessing figure of this emancipated woman, but the expression on her face made a bad impression on the viewer. One felt inclined to ask: "What's the matter? Are you hungry? Bored? Afraid? Why so tense?" Just like Sitnikov, she was always anxious. She spoke and moved in a rather casual, though awkward,manner: she obviously considered herself a good-natured, simple creature; at the same time, no matter what she did, it always seemed that she didn't want to be doing that. Everything she did appeared to be done on purpose, as children say, that is, neither simply nor naturally.”

“tôi vẫn ngồi, vẫn nhìn, vẫn nghe - và lòng tràn ngập một cảm xúc không biết nên gọi là gì, nhưng trong đó có tất cả: niềm vui, nỗi buồn, linh cảm về tương lai, những khát vọng và sự lo âu về cuộc đời. Nhưng lúc ấy tôi còn chưa hiểu gì và tôi cũng không biết gọi tên tất cả những cảm xúc bề bộn trong lòng tôi là gì, hay cũng chỉ biết gọi tất cả những cái đó bằng một cái tên - Zinaitđa”

“Ogni uomo, caro mio, è dato in pasto a se stesso.”

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

“It's all romanticism, nonsense, rottenness, art.”

“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?”

“O youth! youth! you go your way heedless, uncaring – as if you owned all the treasures of the world; even grief elates you, even sorrow sits well upon your brow. You are self-confident and insolent and you say, 'I alone am alive – behold!' even while your own days fly past and vanish without trace and without number, and everything within you melts away like wax in the sun .. like snow .. and perhaps the whole secret of your enchantment lies not, indeed, in your power to do whatever you may will, but in your power to think that there is nothing you will not do: it is this that you scatter to the winds – gifts which you could never have used to any other purpose. Each of us feels most deeply convinced that he has been too prodigal of his gifts – that he has a right to cry, 'Oh, what could I not have done, if only I had not wasted my time.”

“The queen gazes into the garden. There, near the trees, is a fountain; it is white in the darkness and tall, tall as a ghost. The queen hears, through the talk and the music, the soft splashing of its waters. She looks and thinks. You, Sirs, you are all noble, clever, rich, you throng round me, every one of my words is precious to you, you are all ready to die at my feet, you are my slaves.. But there, by the fountain, by the plashing water, he whose slave I am awaits me. He wears neither gorgeous raiment nor precious stones, no one knows him, but he await me, sure that I come – and I shall come –and there is no power in the world that can stop me when I want to go to him, to be with him, to lose myself with him there in the darkness of the garden, with the rustling of the trees and the murmur of the fountain …' Zinaida was silent.”

“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?”

“Nemáme čo vyčkávať.”

“But I had absolutely lost all sense of personal dignity, and could not tear myself away from the spectacle of my own misery.”

“Moreover, probably owing to excessive self-consciousness, perhaps as the result of the generally unfortunate cast of my personality, there existed between my thoughts and feelings, and the expression of those feelings and thoughts, a sort of inexplicable, irrational, and utterly insuperable barrier; and whenever I made up my mind to overcome this obstacle by force, to break down this barrier, my gestures, the expression of my face, my whole being, took on an appearance of painful constraint. I not only seemed, I positively became unnatural and affected. I was conscious of this myself, and hastened to shrink back into myself. Then a terrible commotion was set up within me. I analysed myself to the last thread, compared myself with others, recalled the slightest glances, smiles, words of the people to whom I had tried to open myself out, put the worst construction on everything, laughed vindictively at my own pretensions to 'be like every one else,'—and suddenly, in the midst of my laughter, collapsed utterly into gloom, sank into absurd dejection, and then began again as before—went round and round, in fact, like a squirrel on its wheel. Whole days were spent in this harassing, fruitless exercise.”

“There is a sweetness in being the sole source, the autocratic and irresponsible cause of the greatest joy and profoundest pain to another, and I was like wax in Zinaïda's hands; though, indeed, I was not the only one in love with her. All the men who visited the house were crazy over her, and she kept them all in leading-strings at her feet. It amused her to arouse their hopes and then their fears, to turn them round her finger (she used to call it knocking their heads together), while they never dreamed of offering resistance and eagerly submitted to her. About her whole being, so full of life and beauty, there was a peculiarly bewitching mixture of slyness and carelessness, of artificiality and simplicity, of composure and frolicsomeness; about everything she did or said, about every action of hers, there clung a delicate, fine charm, in which an individual power was manifest at work. And her face was ever changing, working too; it expressed, almost at the same time, irony, dreaminess, and passion. Various emotions, delicate and quick-changing as the shadows of clouds on a sunny day of wind, chased one another continually over her lips and eyes.”

“Bir başkasının en büyük sevinçlerinin ve en derin acılarının yegane kaynağı,keyfi ve sorumsuz sebebi olmak çok tatlıydı.”

“From lips indifferent of her death I heard, Indifferently I listened to it, too,'were echoing in my heart. O youth, youth! little dost thou care for anything; thou art master, as it were, of all the treasures of the universe—even sorrow gives thee pleasure, even grief thou canst turn to thy profit; thou art self-confident and insolent; thou sayest, 'I alone am living—look you!'—but thy days fly by all the while, and vanish without trace or reckoning; and everything in thee vanishes, like wax in the sun, like snow…. And, perhaps, the whole secret of thy charm lies, not in being able to do anything, but in being able to think thou wilt do anything; lies just in thy throwing to the winds, forces which thou couldst not make other use of; in each of us gravely regarding himself as a prodigal, gravely supposing that he is justified in saying, 'Oh, what might I not have done if I had not wasted my time!”

“Ah genclik! Genclik! Pervasizca,umursamadan gidiyorsun kendi yolunda-dünyanin bütün hazineleri seninmiş gibi;keder bile seni umutlandırıyor,acı bile alnına çok güzel oturuyor.Özgüvenli ve küstahsın ve "sadece ben canlıyım,bakın!" diyorsun.Kendi günlerin hızla uçup,hiçbir iz bırakmadan yok olur ve içinmdeki her şey güneşin altında eriyip giderken bile mum gibi...kar gibi..ve belki de senin sihrinin bütün sırrı istediğin her şeyi yapabilme gücünde değil,yapmayacağın hiçbir şey olmadığını düşünme gücünde saklı.(İlk Aşk-Turgenyev)”

“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. ”

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

“Everything on earth -- both the good things and the bad things -- is not given to a man according to his just deserts, but as a result of certain as yet unknown, yet logical, laws which I won't even undertake to suggest to you, although it sometimes seems to me that I feel them as through a glass darkly.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Youth eats all the sugared fancy cakes and regards them as its daily bread. But there'll come a time when you'll start asking just for a crust.”

“И, может быть, вся тайна твоей прелести состоит не в возможности всё сделать, а в возможности думать, что ты всё сделаешь, — состоит именно в том, что ты пускаешь по ветру силы, которые ни на что другое употребить бы не умела, — в том, что каждый из нас не шутя считает себя расточителем, не шутя полагает, что он вправе сказать: «О, что бы я сделал, если б я не потерял времени даром!»”

“I walked in the meadows of green grieving for my life. ”