Ivan Turgenev Love Quotations

What did I hope for, what did I expect, what rich future did I foresee, when the phantom of my first love, rising up for an instant, barely called forth one sigh, one mournful sentiment?

I believe love produces a certain flowering of the whole personality which nothing else can achieve....

Love isn't actually a feeling at all--it's an illness, a certain condition of body and soul.... Usually it takes possession of someone without his permission, all of a sudden, against his will--just like cholera or a fever.

Love, I thought, is stronger than death or the fear of death. Only by it, by love, life holds together and advances.

In my case there was no first love. I began with the second.