Youth eats all the sugared fancy cakes and regards them as its daily bread. But there'll come a time when you'll start asking just for a crust.
Ivan TurgenevRead
Death's an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew.
Interpretation
Death is a common experience, yet each person's confrontation with it is unique.
In this quote, Turgenev reflects on the universal nature of death as a shared human experience, likening it to an old joke that has been told many times. However, he underscores that despite its familiarity, each individual faces their own mortality in a personal and fresh way, highlighting the profound and often individualized impact of death on our lives.
In practice
During a speech about life and loss, I could use this quote to illustrate the universal experience of death.
Youth eats all the sugared fancy cakes and regards them as its daily bread. But there'll come a time when you'll start asking just for a crust.
To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.
So many memories and so little worth remembering, and in front of me - a long, long road without a goal.
If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.
Whereas I think: 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!
I walked in the meadows of green grieving for my life.
Bishops move diagonally. That's why they often turn up where the kings don't expect them to be.
When you're at a certain point in your time - age, that is, when you're older - you start to realize that, actually, what you leave behind you does count, and so you start to become fundamentally aware of your own destiny, which sounds very grand. It's not grand at all, actually.
The things we hope for lead us to faith, while the things we hope in lead us to charity. The three qualities faith, hope, and charity working together, grounded on the truth and light of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, lead us to abound in good works
It is not the man who is responsible for the offerings as they become Christ's Body and Blood; it is Christ Himself who was crucified for us. The standing figure belongs to the priest who speaks these words. The power and the grace belong to God. 'This is My Body,' he says. And these words transform the offerings.
It makes me furious to hear haters of all skin colors - especially Christian, Jewish, and Muslim fundamentalists - deride other people because of their different beliefs and lifestyles.
But her's was the misery of innocence, which, like a cloud that passes over the fair moon, for a while hides, but cannot tarnish its brightness.
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