Ivan Turgenev

"The most sacred thing is to subordinate one's personality to one's work."

"I cannot abide by a man who speculates on the last day."

"To wish is to believe that something will happen without doing anything about it."

"Nature is not always tricked out in a bud, my dear."

"In our time, every thinking man feels before everything else the yawning abyss of skepticism."

"The soul of another is a dark forest beyond our grasp."

"Lack of time is lack of love."

"With me everything goes by intuition; only afterwards can I explain my reasons."

"A writer must be able to stand alone."

"Liberalism is the faith of the future."

"To understand the world, one must not be in too great a hurry to define it."

"The chief good is the absence of pain."

"Nothing gives a man more liberty than money."

"A man, however wise, cannot shake off his era."

"How unhappy the very rich and the very poor must be!"

"In solitude we must find our truth."

"Kind words are the music of the world."

"Every man likes to imagine that he has at least started to live only when he can say that he is not living as he wishes to."

"A man is bound to have weaknesses; the chief thing is that a man should be aware of them."

"To live without philosophy is, in fact, to live blindly."

"Fathers and sons are forever locked in an age-old struggle."

"I have always maintained that in a free country anyone might write anything."

"The best time to make friends is before you need them."

"One must inevitably come to terms with one's own past."

"Envy is the art of counting the other fellow's blessings instead of your own."

"Life is not a corridor with a nice, neat beginning and end."

"The man who knows nothing of foreign languages knows nothing of his own."

"All great souls are born into confusion."

"Death smiles at us all; all a man can do is smile back."

"The thirst for beauty is never fully quenched."