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 and the heavy-laden there waits sleep, sweet sleep.

— Ivan Turgenev

A man's capable of understanding anything - how the ether vibrates, and what's going on in the sun - but how any other man can blow his nose differently from him, that he's incapable of understanding.

— Ivan Turgenev

And was it his destined part / Only one moment in his life / To be close to your heart?

— Ivan Turgenev

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

Can it be that their prayers and their tears are fruitless? Can it be that love, sacred devoted love, is not all powerful? Oh, no! However passionate, sinful or rebellious the heart hidden in the tomb, the flowers growing over it peep at us serenely with their innocent eyes;they tell us not only of eternal peace, of that great peace of"indifferent" nature; they tell us also of eternal reconciliation Andon life without end.

— Ivan Turgenev

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

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

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

It's no good writing if God hasn't given you talent. People will just laugh.

— Ivan Turgenev

It’s strange how things happen in life: you live with someone for a long time, you are on the best of terms, yet you never once speak to them frankly and from the heart; with someone else, you’ve hardly even got acquainted - and there you are: as if at confession, one or other of you is blurting out all his most intimate secrets.

— Ivan Turgenev