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.
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.
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.
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.
So many memories and so little worth remembering, and in front of me - a long, long road without a goal.
What a magnificent body, how I should like to see it on the dissecting table.
I believe love produces a certain flowering of the whole personality which nothing else can achieve.
I don't see why it's impossible to express everything that's on one's mind.
I was as happy as a fish in water, and I could have stayed in that room for ever, have never left that place.
Great God, grant that twice two be not four.
Death's an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew.
I am a flirt: I have no heart: I have an actor's nature.
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.
To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.
Most people can't understand how others can blow their noses differently than they do.
Who among us has the strength to oppose petty egoism, those petty good feelings, pity and remorse?
We sit in the mud... and reach for the stars.
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
Whereas I think: I’m lying here in a haystack... The tiny space I occupy is so infinitesimal in comparison with the rest of space, which I don’t occupy and which has no relation to me. And the period of time in which I’m fated to live is so insignificant beside the eternity in which I haven’t existed and won’t exist... And yet in this atom, this mathematical point, blood is circulating, a brain is working, desiring something... What chaos! What a farce!
There is a sweetness in being the sole source, the autocratic and irresponsible cause of the greatest joy and profoundest pain to another.
Nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man's the workman in it.
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.
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.
I only know that I feel tired, antiquated; I feel as though I had been living a long, long time.
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.
If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.
Circumstances define us; they force us onto one road or another, and then they punish us for it.
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.
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?
The people who bind themselves to systems are those who are unable to encompass the whole truth and try to catch it by the tail; a system is like the tail of truth, but truth is like a lizard; it leaves its tail in your fingers and runs away knowing full well that it will grow a new one in a twinkling.
As for work, without it, without painstaking work, any writer or artist definitely remains a dilettante; there's no point in waiting for so-called blissful moments, for inspiration; if it comes, so much the better--but you keep working anyway.
Significance is sweet.
There's only one way for an individual to remain upright, not to fall to pieces, not to sink into the mire of self-oblivionorself-contempt. That's calmly to turn away from everything, to say, "Enough!" and, folding one's useless arms across one's empty breast, to retain the ultimate, the sole attainable virtue, the virtue of recognizing one's own insignificance.
There's something tragic in the fate of almost every person--it's just that the tragic is often concealed from a person by the banal surface of life.... A woman will complain of indigestion and not even know that what she means is that her whole life has been shattered.
That's what children are for—that their parents may not be bored.
I share no man's opinions; I have my own.
He was the soul of politeness to everyone -- to some with a hint of aversion, to others with a hint of respect.
Belonging to oneself--the whole essence of life lies in that.
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.
Love isn't actually a feeling at all--it's an illness, a certain condition of body and soul.... Usually it takes possession of someone without his permission, all of a sudden, against his will--just like cholera or a fever.
Go and try to disprove death. Death will disprove you, and that's all!
It's all romanticism, nonsense, rottenness, art.
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.
Don't force me into saying what I don't want to say, and what I won't say.
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?
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.
Everyone needs help from everyone else.
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.
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.
In my case there was no first love. I began with the second.
One may speak about anything on earth with fire, with enthusiasm, with ecstasy, but one only speaks about oneself with avidity.
Nothing is worse and more hurtful than a happiness that comes too late.
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.
The temerity to believe in nothing.
I've become convinced that every person should treat himself strictly and even rudely and distrustfully; it's difficult to tame the beast in oneself.
The fact is that previously they were simply dunces and now they've suddenly become nihilists.
We’re young, we’re not monsters, no fools: we’ll conquer happiness for ourselves.
However much you knock at nature's door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words.
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.
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.
Art, if one employs this term in the broad sense that includes poetry within its realm, is an art of creation laden with ideals, located at the very core of the life of a people, defining the spiritual and moral shape of that life.
What's terrible is that there's nothing terrible, that the very essence of life is petty, uninteresting, and degradingly trite.
It was only the vulgarly mediocre that repelled her.
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.
I never started from ideas but always from character.
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.
Oh youth, youth! You don't worry about anything; you seem to possess all the treasures of the universe--even sorrow gives you pleasure, even grief suits you.... And perhaps the whole secret of your charm lies not in your ability to do everything, but in your ability to think that you will do everything.
There are some moments in life, some feelings; one can only point to them and pass by.
Whatever man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself.
Anyone who has crossed from the district of Bolkhov into that of Zhizdra will probably have been struck by the sharp difference between the natives of the provinces of Orel and Kaluga.
I'm through with Tolstoy. He has ceased to exist for me.... If I eat a bowl of soup and like it, I know by that fact alone and with absolute certainty that Tolstoy will find it bad, and vice versa.
Love, I thought, is stronger than death or the fear of death. Only by it, by love, life holds together and advances.
I look up to heaven only when I want to sneeze.
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.
However passionate, sinning, and rebellious the heart hidden in the tomb, the flowers growing over it peep serenely at us with their innocent eyes; they tell us not of eternal peace alone, of that great peace of "indifferent" nature: they tell us, too, of eternal reconciliation and of life without end.
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.
What did I hope for, what did I expect, what rich future did I foresee, when the phantom of my first love, rising up for an instant, barely called forth one sigh, one mournful sentiment?
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!
A son is like a lopped off branch. As a falcon he comes when he wills and goes where he lists.
Every man's happiness is built on the unhappi-ness of another.
a person who gets angry at his own illness is sure to overcome it
The word tomorrow was invented for indecisive people and for children.
What's important is that twice two is four and all the rest's nonsense.
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.
Even nightingales can’t be fed on fairy tales.
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.
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!
To tell about a drunken muzhik's beating his wife is incomparably harder than to compose a whole tract about the 'woman question.'
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.
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.
Each individual is more or less dimly aware of his significance, is aware that he's something innately superior, something eternal--and lives, is obligated to live, in the moment and for the moment.
I was afraid of looking into my heart...afraid of thinking seriously about anything...I did not want to know whether I was loved, and I did not want to admit to myself that I was not loved.
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.
I walked in the meadows of green grieving for my life.
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.
Illness isn't the only thing that spoils the appetite.
The past was a dream wasn't it? And who ever remembers dreams?
I agree with no one's opinion. I have some of my own.
Bazarov drew himself up haughtily. "I don't adopt any one's ideas; I have my own.
