Ivan Quotes

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? ~ Ivan Turgenev

I want you to know that it is not always easy to love me. That sometimes my chest is a field full of landmines, and where you went last night, you can't go tomorrow. There is no manual, there is no road map, no help line you can call; my body does not come with instructions, and sometimes even I don't know what to do with it. This cannot be easy. But still, you touch me anyway. ~ Ivan E. Coyote

What strikes me most forcibly in the ants and beetles and other worthy insects is their astounding seriousness. They run to and fro with such a solemn air, as though their life were something of such importance! A man the lord of creation the highest being, stares at them, if you please, and they pay no attention to him. Why, a gnat will even settle on the lord of creation's nose, and make use of him for food. It's most offensive. And, on the other hand, how is their life inferior to ours? And why shouldn't they take themselves seriously, if we are to be allowed to take ourselves seriously? ~ Ivan Turgenev

You live in the most sacred place
in the universe:
right here,
right now. ~ Ivan M. Granger

What do we need spectators for? The game should be played behind closed doors. Football is an art! ~ Ivan Slavkov

When the meaning of life has been suppressed, there still remains life. "I live," says Ivan, "in spite of logic." And again: "If I no longer had any faith in life, if I doubted a woman I loved, or the universal order of things, if I were persuaded, on the contrary, that everything was only an infernal and accursed chaos - even then I would want to live." Ivan will live,
then, and will love as well "without knowing why." But to live is also to act. To act in the name of what?
If there is no immortality, then there is neither reward nor punishment. "I believe that there is no virtue
without immortality." And also: "I only know that suffering exists, that no one is guilty, that everything is
connected, that everything passes away and equals out." But if there is no virtue, there is no law:
"Everything is permitted. ~ Albert Camus

I could not simplify myself.
(From the suicide note of a character named Nejdanov) ~ Ivan Turgenev

Science demands from a man all his life. If you had two lives that would not be enough for you. Be passionate in your work and in your searching. ~ Ivan Pavlov

The hardest thing for everyone, for the writer, for the director and certainly for the actors, is not to panic when they're doing a certain line for the tenth time because everything ceases to be funny after it's been repeated. ~ Ivan Reitman

Protection against this general monopoly is as difficult as protection against pollution. People will face a danger that threatens their own self-interest but not one that threatens society as a whole. Many more people are against cars than are against driving them. They are against cars because they pollute and because they monopolize traffic. They drive cars
because they consider the pollution created by one car insignificant, and because they do not feel personally deprived of freedom when they drive. It is also difficult to be protected against monopoly when a society is already littered with roads, schools, or hospitals, when independent action has been paralyzed for so long that the ability for it seems to have atrophied, and when simple alternatives seem beyond the reach of the imagination. Monopoly is hard to get 4d of when it has frozen not
only the shape of the physical world but also the range of behavior and of imagination. Radical monopoly is generally discovered only when it is too late. ~ Ivan Illich

Words indeed have been my ruin; they have consumed me, and to the end I cannot be free of them. ~ Ivan Turgenev

The "why not" of youth, the secret desire to know his luck, to try his strength all on his own without the support of another, eventually won through. ~ Ivan Turgenev

Conversation sprang up as to the elegance and realism of her acting -- the sort of conversation that is always repeated and is always the same. In the midst of the conversation Fedor Petrovich glanced at Ivan Ilych and became silent. The others also looked at him and grew silent. Ivan ~ Leo Tolstoy

People always want to use this damn place, they need a room to hold this meeting or that, you'd think a library was a big beehive. Myself, I don't see why they can't just check out a couple of books and go home and read. But no, they bunch up and want to cram in here and talk the ears off one another half the night. ~ Ivan Doig

A good actor is someone who knows how to take the part and make it real and make it honest and be effective in it. If it's in a funny movie and, as long as they are cast in an appropriate way, humor will come from it. ~ Ivan Reitman

Memories are the height of poetry only when they are memories of happiness. When they graze wounds over which scars have formed they become an aching pain. ~ Ivan Goncharov

I didn't know why it made my heart sing loud to itself that a stranger thought I was a boy. It just did. Made me feel like he could look inside me and see some part of the truth of me in there.
But it did make me inexplicably sad that a stranger could see me, and my own family could not. ~ Ivan E. Coyote

and Ivan Ilyich was left alone with the consciousness that his life was poisoned and was poisoning the lives of others, and that this poison did not weaken but penetrated more and more deeply into his whole being. With ~ Leo Tolstoy

Victims of misfortune are quick to sense another of their kind from a distance, but in old age they rarely become friends, which is in no way surprising: they have nothing to share together - not even hope. ~ Ivan Turgenev

Downtown is divided again, between the blocks of brick emporiums of the 1880s and a straggle of modern stores which look as if they have been squeezed from a tube labeled Instant Shopping Center. ~ Ivan Doig

The operation of a peer-matching network would be simple. The user would identify himself by name and address and describe the activity for which he sought a peer. A computer would send him back the names and addresses of all those who had inserted the same description. It is amazing that such a simple utility has never been used on a broad scale for publicly valued activity ~ Ivan Illich

I think; here I lie under a haystack ... The tiny space I occupy is so infinitely small in comparison with the rest of space, in which I am not, and which has nothing to do with me; and the period of time in which it is my lot to live is so petty beside the eternity in which I have not been, and shall not be ... And in this atom, this mathematical point, the blood is circulating, the brain is working and wanting something ... Isn't it loathsome? Isn't it petty? ~ Ivan Turgenev

To be ignorant or unconvinced of one's own needs has become the unforgivable anti-social act. The good citizen is one who imputes standardized needs to himself with such conviction that he drowns out any desire for alternatives, much less the renunciation of need. ~ Ivan Illich

A good trademark, whether a word mark or a symbol, is devoid of fashion or trend, which makes it potentially iconic if it's seen for long enough in the right places. ~ Ivan Chermayeff

That's what children are for - that their parents may not be bored. ~ Ivan Turgenev

The true miracle of modern medicine is diabolical. It consists in making not only individuals but whole populations survive on inhumanly low levels of personal health. ~ Ivan Illich

My books already threatened to take over my part of the room and keep on going ... whatever cargoes of words I could lay my hands on I gave safe harbor. ~ Ivan Doig

What is Imagination but mental mischief of a kind, and why can't the youngster protectively occupy himself with invention of that sort before maturity works him over? ~ Ivan Doig

As the sea is beautiful not only in calm but also in storm, so is happiness found not only in peace but also in strife. ~ Ivan Panin

Thinking is thinking. It happens in spite of a person. ... I don't have any choice. This stuff I'm talking about is on my mind whether or not I want it to be. English Creek ~ Ivan Doig

At the point where he, today's Ivan Ilyich, began to emerge, all the pleasures that had seemed so real melted away now before his eyes and turned into something trivial and often disgusting.
And the further he was from childhood, the nearer he got to the present day, the more trivial and dubious his pleasures appeared. It started with law school. That had retained a little something that was really good: there was fun, there was friendship, there was hope. But in the last years the good times had become more exceptional. Then, at the beginning of his service with the governor, some good times came again: memories of making love to a woman. Then it became all confused, and the good times were not so many. After that there were fewer still; the further he went the fewer there were.
Marriage. . .an accident and such a disappointment, and his wife's bad breath, and all that sensuality and hypocrisy! And the deadlines of his working life, and those money worries, going on for a year, two years, ten, twenty - always the same old story. And the longer it went on the deadlier it became.
'It's as if I had been going downhill when I thought I was going uphill. That's how it was. In society's opinion I was heading uphill, but in equal measure life was slipping away from me...And now it's all over. Nothing left but to die! ~ Leo Tolstoy

She never indulged in reveries or tried to be clever in her conversation; she seemed to have drawn a line in her mind beyond which she never went. It was quite obvious that feelings, every kind of relationship, including love, entered into her life on equal terms with everything else, while in the case of other women love quite manifestly takes part, if not in deeds, then in words, in all the problems of life, and everything else is allowed in only in so far as love leaves room for it. The thing this woman esteemed most was the art of living, of being able to control oneself, of keeping a balance between thought and intention, intention and realization. You could never take her unawares, by surprise, but she was like a watchful enemy whose expectant gaze would always be fixed on you, however hard you tried to lie in wait for him. High society was her element, and therefore tact and caution prompted her every thought, word, and movement. ~ Ivan Goncharov

When in doubt, favor compassion
over certainty or tradition. ~ Ivan M. Granger

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. ~ Ivan Turgenev

A lot of deals are done or not done because chief executives are not fully aligned to shareholders. ~ Ivan Glasenberg

Authoritarianism is not pretending anymore to be a real alternative to democracy, but we can see many more authoritarian practices and styles basically being smuggled into democratic governments. ~ Ivan Krastev

I got bad calls every match, and I never got an apology. So I thought it was rather strange. ~ Ivan Lendl

A society dedicated to the protection of equally distributed, modern and effective tools for the exercise of productive liberties cannot come into existence unless the commodities and resources on which the exercise of those liberties is based are equally distributed to all. ~ Ivan Illich

If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin. ~ Ivan Turgenev

For misdirected love, the attainment of its object is, indeed, the best cure; but it cures as the guillotine cures headache. ~ Ivan Panin

P3- every simple need to which an institutional answer is found permit the invention of a new class of poor and a new definition of poverty ~ Ivan Illich

By the way, a Bulgarian I met lately in Moscow," Ivan went on, seeming not to hear his brother's words, "told me about the crimes committed by Turks and Circassians in all parts of Bulgaria through fear of a general rising of the Slavs. They burn villages, murder, outrage women and children, they nail their prisoners by the ears to the fences, leave them so till morning, and in the morning they hang them- all sorts of things you can't imagine. People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it.
These Turks took a pleasure in torturing children, -too; cutting the unborn child from the mothers womb, and tossing babies up in the air and catching them on the points of their bayonets before their mothers' eyes. Doing it before the mothers' eyes was what gave zest to the amusement. Here is another scene that I thought very interesting. Imagine a trembling mother with her baby in her arms, a circle of invading Turks around her. They've planned a diversion: they pet the baby, laugh to make it laugh. They succeed, the baby laughs. At that moment a Turk points a pistol four inches from the baby's face. The baby laughs with glee, holds out its little hands to the pistol, and he pulls the trigger in the baby's face and blows out its brains. A ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible. ~ Leo Tolstoy

And another thing - when you talk to that pompous ass on the phone, do not go all syrupy." He folded his arms across his chest and looked down at her from his superior height.
"Syrupy?" she echoed indignantly, outraged at the accusation. "I never sound syrupy." Her large eyes flashed a warning at him, daring him to pursue his point.
He dared to. "Oh yes, you do." He clasped his hands together and made a face, his voice rising an octave as he simpered. "Oh, Marie, the flowers are so beautiful. Thomas Ivan gave them to me." He rolled his eyes as he mimicked her. ~ Christine Feehan

Anna Sergeyevna looked at Bazarov. A bitter smile played over his pale features. "This man loved me!" she thought - and she felt sorry for him and held out her hand to him in sympathy.
But he understood her.
"No!" he said and took a step backwards. "I'm a poor man but I've never yet taken charity. Goodbye and good luck. ~ Ivan Turgenev

I thought again what an achievement a book is, a magic box simultaneously holding the presence of the author and the wonders of the world. ~ Ivan Doig

Therefore, reincarnation is an experience of the Ego, co-created by its ignorance, by not realizing that what reincarnates in the universe is God (Love) through his Sons, in an infinite multidimensional experience! (If you understand this, you already passed the final exam ~ Ivan Figueroa-Otero

Tennis is not like other sports where the coach is hired by an independent entity, and that makes a huge difference in the dynamic. ~ Ivan Lendl

I realised the amazing power of literature and of the human imagination generally: to make the dead live and to stop the living from dying. ~ Ivan Klima

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. ~ Ivan Turgenev

In case it has slipped your notice, the vast majority of your education has emphasized survival and not getting caught."
"I'd say you talked more about the code than anything else," Tory pointed out.
"What did you think I meant by survival," Ivan countered. ~ Drew Hayes

The real Ivan was rather more elusive, Mark gauged; it would not do to underestimate his subtlety, or mistake him for a simpleton. ~ Anonymous

Like Ivan [Reitman] has said, there's a lot that a life encompasses. ~ Julianne Moore

To be young and not to know how, is bearable; to be old and not have the strength, is too great a weight to carry. And what's is so painful you can't sense your powers leaving you. It's hard for an old man to ensure such blows! ~ Ivan Turgenev

A person who gets angry at his own illness is sure to overcome it ~ Ivan Turgenev

Then my first film was something called Cannibal Girls, which sounds like a horror movie but was actually kind of a goofy comedy with horror elements. Like a horror spoof. ~ Ivan Reitman

I thought if we could put our hard-working culture as traders into the asset management, it will be a great combination, and we did do that. ~ Ivan Glasenberg

Achieving greatness in any endeavor begins with mastering the fundamentals. ~ Ivan R. Misner

The United States and Russia probably do not have common aims and dreams, but they have common worries: Both Washington and Moscow are concerned about the rise of China and are threatened by the rise of radical Islam. ~ Ivan Krastev

Stop struggling for perfection,
and recognize the perfection
you already are. ~ Ivan M. Granger

I've said I will be CEO as long as my colleagues want me. ~ Ivan Glasenberg

I sleep ... but the happy heart of mine sleeps not... ~ Ivan Turgenev

[It's] difficult to engage people in politics when they believe that what really matters is where they personally stand. ~ Ivan Krastev

Most curable sickness can now be diagnosed and treated by laymen. People find it so difficult to accept this statement because the complexity of medical ritual has hidden from them the simplicity of its basic procedures. It took the example of
the barefoot doctor in China to show how modern practice by simple workers in their spare time could, in three years,
catapult health care in China to levels unparalleled elsewhere. In most other countries health care by laymen is considered a
crime. A seventeen-year-old friend of mine was recently tried for having treated some 130 of her high-school colleagues for
VD. She was acquitted on a technicality by the judge when expert counsel compared her performance with that of the U.S. Health Service. Nowhere in the U.S.A. can her achievement be considered "standard," because she succeeded in making retests on all her patients six weeks after their first treatment. Progress should mean growing competence in self-care rather than growing dependence. 5 ~ Ivan Illich

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

You know, you just go out there, do your best. Sometimes it's good enough and sometimes it is, and sometimes it stays your only one and sometimes you win bunch others behind it. ~ Ivan Lendl

- Why do you think I am special?
- If I would answer you, you will be no more. ~ Cristian Peter Marinescu-Ivan

After all, when you think of it, nothing is stronger in the world...and weaker--than a word! ~ Ivan Turgenev

He had never clearly fathomed the true weight of a word of good, truth, and purity cast in the stream of human speech and the deep bend it cut in it. Nor had he thought that a word spoken boldly and loudly, with no hint of false shame, but rather with courage, that this word would not drown in the ugly cries of fashionable satyrs but would plunge like a pearl into the abyss of public life and always find itself a shell.
Many stumble over a good word, blushing in embarrassment, and utter a careless word boldly and loudly, never suspecting that it, too, unfortunately, will not go for naught but will leave a long trail of often times ineradicable evil.
p. 296 ~ Ivan Goncharov

Growth has become addictive. Like heroin addiction, the habit distorts basic value judgments. Addicts of any kind are willing to pay increasing amounts for declining satisfactions. They have become tolerant to
escalating marginal disutility. They are blind to deeper frustration because they are absorbed in playing for always mounting stakes. ~ Ivan Illich

The office Halloween party was at the Royalton last week and I went as a mass murderer, complete with a sign painted on my back that read MASS MURDERER (which was decidedly lighter than the sandwich board I had constructed earlier that day that read DRILLER KILLER), and beneath those two words I had written in blood Yep, that's me and the suit was also covered with blood, some of it fake, most of it real. In one fist I clenched a hank of Victoria Bell's hair, and pinned next to my boutonniere (a small white rose) was a finger bone I'd boiled the flesh off of. As elaborate as my costume was, Craig McDermott still managed to win first place in the competition. He came as Ivan Boesky, which I thought was unfair since a lot of people thought I'd gone as Michael Milken last year. The Patty Winters Show this morning was about Home Abortion Kits. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper with Ivan the coachman, falling into angry discussions, expressing my opinions tactlessly; ~ Leo Tolstoy

The past was a dream wasn't it? And who ever remembers dreams? ~ Ivan Turgenev

He entered the house quickly, pushed past the detectives, and clasped both of Alexandria's hands in his.
Something deep within Aidan coiled dangerously at the sight of her hands in Thomas Ivan's. His breath stopped. His heart ceased to beat. The demon within stirred and roared for release, fangs exploded into his mouth, and the red haze of the beasts flamed in his eyes. As Thomas leaned in close, intending to kiss her cheek, Aidan fought for control so that he could casually wave a hand, directing a flurry of dust spores to whirl and dance beneath Ivan's nose. As Ivan inhaled, he began to sneeze violently, the spasms wracking his entire body. ~ Christine Feehan

It's very nice to see when somebody who wanted to work hard and is willing to put the work in gets rewarded for it. ~ Ivan Lendl

Life is mostly freehand. ~ Ivan Doig

I enjoy life. I always enjoy jokes. ~ Ivan Lendl

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. ~ Ivan Turgenev

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. ~ Ivan Turgenev

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

Wherever the shadow of economic growth touches us, we are left useless unless employed on a job or engaged in consumption...We lose sight of our resources, lose control over the environmental conditions which make these resources applicable, lose taste for self-reliant coping with challenges from without and anxiety from within. ~ Ivan Illich

If you have the opportunity to avenge the one who hurt you, do it because not only will you lose your honor, but also because you create a fake beast of a coward. ~ Ivan Veljanoski

And the years came and went, the decades. But now it's no longer possible to put it off any more: either now or never. The one final opportunity must be taken, for the hour is late and nobody will come upon me. ~ Ivan Bunin

It was suicide, wasn't it?" "In an involuntary sort of way," said Vorob'yev. "These Cetagandan political suicides can get awfully messy, when the principal won't cooperate." "Thirty-two stab wounds in the back, worst case of suicide they ever saw?" murmured Ivan, clearly fascinated by the gossip. "Exactly, my lord. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold

However much you knock at nature's door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words. ~ Ivan Turgenev

In the case of the stomach, however, the nerves of the glandular cells were always severed when constructing an artificially isolated pouch and this, naturally, affected the normal work of the stomach. ~ Ivan Pavlov

When Rin Tin Tin first became famous, most dogs in the world would not sit down when asked. Dogs performed duties: they herded sheep, they barked at strangers, they did what dogs do naturally, and people learned to interpret and make use of how they behaved. The idea of a dog's being obedient for the sake of good manners was unheard of. When dogs lived outside, as they usually did on farms and ranches, the etiquette required of them was minimal. But by the 1930s, Americans were leaving farms and moving into urban and suburban areas, bringing dogs along as pets and sharing living quarters with them. At the time, the principles of behavior were still mostly a mystery -- Ivan Pavlov's explication of conditional reflexes, on which much training is based, wasn't even published in an English translation until 1927. If dogs needed to be taught how to behave, people had to be trained to train their dogs. The idea that an ordinary person -- not a dog professional -- could train his own pet was a new idea, which is partly why Rin Tin Tin's performances in movies and onstage were looked upon as extraordinary. ~ Susan Orlean

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. ~ Ivan Turgenev

The university graduate has been schooled for selective
service among the rich of the world.

Üniversite bitirenler dünya varsıllarına seçkin hizmetlerde bulunmaları hedefiyle okutulmuşlardır. ~ Ivan Illich

Living, if we go about it with selfishness and lack of awareness about our interdependence with the universal laws and other beings, turns into a nightmare of suffering with brief moments of happiness ~ Ivan Figueroa-Otero

Follow the trace of time
until the start
collapses with the end
in the space of the heart. ~ Ivan M. Granger

Perfect as the wing of a bird may be, it will never enable the bird to fly if unsupported by the air. Facts are the air of science. Without them a man of science can never rise. ~ Ivan Pavlov

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! ~ Ivan Turgenev

Homo economicus was surreptitiously taken as the emblem and analogue for all living beings. A mechanistic anthropomorphism has gained currency. Bacteria are imagined to mimic "economic" behavior and to engage in internecine competition for the scarce oxygen available in their environment. A cosmic struggle among ever more complex forms of life has become the anthropic foundational myth of the scientific age. ~ Ivan Illich

Finally, as the digestive canal is a complex system, a series of separate chemical laboratories, I cut the connections between them in order to investigate the course of phenomena in each particular laboratory; thus I resolved the digestive canal into several separate parts. ~ Ivan Pavlov

Introduction I learned about a lot of things in medical school, but mortality wasn't one of them. Although I was given a dry, leathery corpse to dissect in my first term, that was solely a way to learn about human anatomy. Our textbooks had almost nothing on aging or frailty or dying. How the process unfolds, how people experience the end of their lives, and how it affects those around them seemed beside the point. The way we saw it, and the way our professors saw it, the purpose of medical schooling was to teach how to save lives, not how to tend to their demise. The one time I remember discussing mortality was during an hour we spent on The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Tolstoy's classic novella. ~ Atul Gawande

Each day, each moment
is a step into the unknown.
How can we feel anything
but amazement? ~ Ivan M. Granger

But man has still another powerful resource: natural science with its strictly objective methods. ~ Ivan Pavlov

Oh, Arkady, do me a favour, do let us for once have a really good quarrel - no holds barred, to the death." "But if we do, it'll end in..." "Blows?" Bazarov continued. "What if it does? Here, in the hay, in these idyllic surroundings, far from the world and the eyes of men - it doesn't matter. But you won't beat me. I'm going to take you now by the throat... ~ Ivan Turgenev

Also watching a movie on DVD is different than watching it in the theater. ~ Ivan Reitman