“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.”
― Ivan Turgenev, quote from First Love
“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.”
― Ivan Turgenev, quote from First Love
“My son,' he wrote to me, 'fear the love of woman; fear that bliss, that poison....”
― Ivan Turgenev, quote from First Love
“There is a sweetness in being the sole source, the autocratic
and irresponsible cause of the greatest joy and profoundest pain to another.”
― Ivan Turgenev, quote from First Love
“--while the sun and wind played gently in its spreading branches; the bells of the Donskoy monastery would sometimes float across--tranquil and sad--and I would sit and gaze and listen, and would be filled with a nameless sensation which had everything in it; sorrow and joy, a premonition of the future, and desire, and fear of life.”
― Ivan Turgenev, quote from First Love
“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.”
― Ivan Turgenev, quote from First Love
“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, quote from First Love
“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, quote from First Love
“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.”
― Ivan Turgenev, quote from First Love
“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, quote from First Love
“And here am I ... what did I hope - what did I expect? What rich promise did the future seem to hold out to me, when with scarcely a sigh - only a bleak sense of utter desolation - I took my leave from the brief phantom, risen for a fleeting instant, of my first love?
What has come of it all - of all that I had hoped for? And now when the shades of evening are beginning to close in upon my life, what have I left that is fresher, dearer to me, than the memories of that brief storm that came and went so swiftly one morning in spring?”
― Ivan Turgenev, quote from First Love
“Know how to will, and you will be free, and will lead.”
― Ivan Turgenev, quote from First Love
“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.”
― Ivan Turgenev, quote from First Love
“My blood was in a ferment within me, my heart was full of longing, sweetly and foolishly; I was all expectancy and wonder; I was tremulous and waiting; my fancy fluttered and circled about the same images like martins round a bell-tower at dawn; I dreamed and was sad and sometimes cried. But through the tears and the melancholy, inspired by the music of verse or the beauty of the evening, there always rose upwards, like the grasses of early spring, shoots of happy feeling, of young and surging life.”
― Ivan Turgenev, quote from First Love
“I gave myself up to fruitless speculation, and was always looking for secluded places. I became particularly fond of the ruined greenhouse. I used to climb, I remember, on to the high wall, settle myself on it and sit there, a youth afflicted by such misery, solitude and grief that I would be overcome with self-pity. How I reveled in these melancholy feelings - how I adored them.”
― Ivan Turgenev, quote from First Love
“Beware of the love of women; beware of that ecstasy - that slow poison.”
― Ivan Turgenev, quote from First Love
“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, quote from First Love
“Then I used to lock myself in my room, or go to the end of the garden, climb on to the ruin of a high stone greenhouse and, dangling my legs from the wall which looked out on the road, would sit for hours, staring and staring, seeing nothing. Near me, over the dusty nettles, white butterflies fluttered lazily. A pert little sparrow would fly down on to a half-broken red brick nearby, and would irritate me with its chirping, ceaselessly turning its whole body with its outspread tail; the crows, still wary, occasionally cawed, sitting high, high on the bare top of a birch -- while the sun and wind played gently in its spreading branches; the bells of the Donskoy monastery would sometimes float across -- tranquil and sad -- and I would sit and gaze and listen, and would be filled with a nameless sensation which had everything in it; sorrow and joy, a premonition of the future, and desire, and fear of life. At the time, I understood none of this, and could not have given a name to any of the feelings which seethed within me; or else I would have called it all by one name – the name of Zinaida.”
― Ivan Turgenev, quote from First Love
“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”
― Ivan Turgenev, quote from First Love
“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)”
― Ivan Turgenev, quote from First Love
“I did not want to know whether I was loved, and I did not want to acknowledge to myself that I was not loved;”
― Ivan Turgenev, quote from First Love
“...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.”
― Ivan Turgenev, quote from First Love
“Bir başkasının en büyük sevinçlerinin ve en derin acılarının yegane kaynağı,keyfi ve sorumsuz sebebi olmak çok tatlıydı.”
― Ivan Turgenev, quote from First Love
“-Yo no he tenido primer amor -declaró, al fin-. Yo empecé directamente por el segundo.”
― Ivan Turgenev, quote from First Love
Ivan Turgenev
Born place: in Oryol, Russian Empire
Born date November 9, 1818
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“Make no mistake, Concorde was an extraordinary technological achievement. Almost certainly, one of the greatest.”
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― Ruskin Bond, quote from The Best of Ruskin Bond
“I know now that my infatuation with Emma was only that. It wasn’t love. And I didn’t love Morning Fawn. I was fond of her, but my mind and body didn’t burn for her the way I burn for you. I have fought my affection for you all these weeks. I can’t fight it anymore. You are my heart song,” he whispered.”
― Peggy L. Henderson, quote from Yellowstone Heart Song
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