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.
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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.
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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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