Fathers and Sons

by Ivan Turgenev

In any case, a son should never be a judge of his father, especially I of such a father as you,

Who’s never in any way out any constraints on my freedom

A nihilist is a man who doesn’t acknowledge any authorities, who doesn’t accept a single principle on faith, no matter how much that principle may be surrounded by respect.’

‘But I’ll tell you this—a man who’s staked everything on the card of a woman’s love and when that card’s beaten gets all embittered and sinks to the point where he’s not fit for anything, he’s not a man, not a real man.

for, in fact, is there anything more attractive in the world than a pretty young mother with a healthy child in her arms?

‘Nature’s also nonsense in the sense in which you understand it. Nature’s not a temple but a workshop, and man’s the worker in it.’

Individual personality, my dear sir—that’s the chief thing. The human personality must be strong as a rock, because everything is built on it.

She stunned him by the dignity of her bearing. Her bare arms lay beautifully against her elegant waist and fine sprays of fuchsia drooped beautifully from her brilliant hair on to her sloping shoulders. Her bright eyes shone calmly and intelligently—calmly, it has to be said, and not pensively—from beneath her slightly pronounced white temples and her lips smiled a scarcely discernible smile. Her face shone with a kind of soft and alluring strength.

Arkady was puzzled and watched her in the way that young people watch—that is to say, constantly asking himself what it all meant.

The appearance of mediocrity is often useful in life because it weakens tautly strung strings and sobers up people’s self-confident or self-forgetful feelings, reminding them how close they are to mediocrity as well.

Every single man hangs by a thread, a bottomless pit can open beneath him any minute, and yet he still goes

On thinking up unpleasantnesses for himself and making a mess of his life

You see there are times when a man finds it useful to take himself by the scruff of the neck and pull himself out of where he is, like pulling a radish out of a vegetable bed. That’s what I did a day or so ago … But I simply wanted to take one last look at what I was leaving behind, at the cosy vegetable bed I’d been in.’

You see what I’m doing—there’s an empty space in my trunk and I’m stuffing hay into it. It’s the same with the luggage of our own lives. It doesn’t matter what you fill it with so long as there’s no empty space.

Oh, no! No matter how passionate, sinning, rebellious is the heart hidden in the grave, the flowers growing on it look at us serenely with their innocent faces; they speak to us not only of that eternal peace, of that great peace of ‘impassive’ nature; they speak to us also of eternal reconciliation and of life everlasting …