Fathers and Sons - Turgenev

Quotes from Fathers and Sons by Turgenev Ivan:

• We sit in the mud, my friend, and reach for the stars.
• I’m lying here in a haystack... The tiny space I occupy is so infinitesimal in comparison with the rest of space, which I don’t occupy and which has no relation to me. And the period of time in which I’m fated to live is so insignificant beside the eternity in which I haven’t existed and won’t exist... And yet in this atom, this mathematical point, blood is circulating, a brain is working, desiring something... What chaos! What a farce!
• As we all know, time sometimes flies like a bird, and sometimes crawls like a worm, but people may be unusually happy when they do not even notice whether time has passed quickly or slowly.
• So many memories and so little worth remembering.
• I don't see why it's impossible to express everything that's on one's mind.
• Every man hangs by a thread, any minute the abyss may open under his feet, and yet he must go and invent for himself all kinds of troubles and spoil his life.
• A single human specimen is sufficient to judge of all by.
• Death's an old joke but it comes fresh to everyone.
• 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.
• Nature is not a temple but a workshop, and man is the workman in it.