Ivan Goncharov

“You have a lunatic before you who has been infected by passion.”

— Ivan Goncharov

“What? Do you suppose the intellect can work separately from the heart?”

— Ivan Goncharov

“Love was life's hardest school of all.”

— Ivan Goncharov

Yesterday one has wished, to-day one attains the madly longed-for object, and to-morrow one will blush to think that one ever desired…

— Ivan Goncharov

“I began life with a quenching of the light of day, and, from the first moment that I realized myself, realized also…

— Ivan Goncharov

“But what was he to do? Stay where he was or move on? This Oblomovian question was for him of even deeper…

— Ivan Goncharov

“Yes, and I think I will have enough strength to live and love my whole life through. One without the other is…

— Ivan Goncharov

“Memories are either the greatest poetry, when they are memories of a vital happiness, or a burning pain, when they touch dried…

— Ivan Goncharov

“Life is duty and obligation, therefore love, too, is a duty. It's as if God sent it to me,' she said, looking…

— Ivan Goncharov

“for, as every one knows, dogs cannot with equanimity see a human being running.”

— Ivan Goncharov

“Now or neverI 'To be or not to be!'"—Oblomov raised himself from his chair a little, but failing to find his slippers…

— Ivan Goncharov

When you don't know what you're living for, you don't care how you live from one day to the next. You're happy…

— Ivan Goncharov

“Art is its own thing, and so is craft — and creativity is common to both, in the same way as its…

— Ivan Goncharov

A close, daily intimacy between two people has to be paid for: it requires a great deal of experience of life, logic,…

— Ivan Goncharov

“When all the forces in your organism come into play, then life will begin to play around you as well. You'll see…

— Ivan Goncharov

I expected so much from life and if I had not seen it so close, I would to this day be expecting…

— Ivan Goncharov

“The moments of nature's universal, triumphant silence had come, those minutes when the creative mind works harder, poetic thoughts seethe more ardently,…

— Ivan Goncharov

“To think that just when one's happiness is full to overflowing, and one is thoroughly in love with life, there should come…

— Ivan Goncharov

“Although people call love a capricious and unaccountable emotion that arises like an illness, nonetheless it has its own laws and reasons,…

— Ivan Goncharov

“She attended the French performance, but the play's content now had a connection to her life. She read a book and the…

— Ivan Goncharov

“these fond parents were not blind to the value of education it was that they realized only its external value. That is…

— Ivan Goncharov

“Plunged up to the ears in work, good friend!" thought Oblomov as he watched him depart. "Yes, and blind and deaf and…

— Ivan Goncharov

“A lover of comfort might shrug after looking at the whole apparent jumble of furniture, old paintings, statues with missing arms and…

— Ivan Goncharov

“He had never clearly fathomed the true weight of a word of good, truth, and purity cast in the stream of human…

— Ivan Goncharov

“Oblomows liggende houding kwam niet uit noodzaak voort, zoals bij een zieke of bij iemand die slapen wil, het was geen toeval,…

— Ivan Goncharov

Memories are the height of poetry only when they are memories of happiness. When they graze wounds over which scars have formed…

— Ivan Goncharov

It is a trick among the dishonest to offer sacrifices that are not needed, or not possible, to avoid making those that…

— Ivan Goncharov

“But in love, merit is won blindly and unaccountably, and in this blindness and unaccountability lies happiness. pp. 445-446”

— Ivan Goncharov

The trouble is that no devastating or redeeming fires have ever burnt in my life… My life began by flickering out.

— Ivan Goncharov

“As a young man, he had instinctively husbanded the freshness of his powers. At the time, it was too soon to see…

— Ivan Goncharov

“All at once he found his mind drawing a parallel between that destiny and his own existence; all at once questions of…

— Ivan Goncharov

“Because he possesses something that is worth more than any amount of intelligence - an honest and faithful heart! It is the…

— Ivan Goncharov

“I desire nothing, seek nothing but peace, the slumber of the soul. I have tasted all the hollowness and wretchedness of life…

— Ivan Goncharov

“She never indulged in reveries or tried to be clever in her conversation; she seemed to have drawn a line in her…

— Ivan Goncharov

“Ah! This is retribution for Promethean fire! Besides being patient, you must also love this sadness and respect your doubts and questions.…

— Ivan Goncharov