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
What this quote means
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.
Themes
DeathLifeMortalityExperienceIndividual
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech about life and loss, I could use this quote to illustrate the universal experience of death.
More from Ivan Turgenev
All quotes →To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.
Ivan TurgenevRead
So many memories and so little worth remembering, and in front of me - a long, long road without a goal.
Ivan TurgenevRead
If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.
Ivan TurgenevRead
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!
Ivan TurgenevRead
I walked in the meadows of green grieving for my life.
Ivan TurgenevRead
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