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
I do not know what the heart of a bad man is like. But i do know what the heart of a good man is like. And it is terrible.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the complexities of human nature, particularly the burdens of goodness.
Ivan Turgenev's quote suggests that while the speaker can only speculate about the nature of evil, they have a profound understanding of goodness, which is characterized by deep suffering and challenge. This implies that the heart of a good person often bears the weight of their moral convictions and the empathy they feel for others, making the burdens of goodness feel tremendous and, at times, unbearable.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the challenges of maintaining moral integrity in difficult situations.
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!
Death's an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew.
While overeating would be seen by some as an indulgence of self, it is in fact a profound rejection of self. It is a moment of self-betrayal and self-punishment, and anything but a commitment to one's own well-being.
This world... ever was, and is, and shall be, ever-living Fire, in measures being kindled and in measures going out.
Socrates, in Plato, formulates ideas of order: the Iliad, like Shakespeare, knows that a violent disorder is a great order.
The toddler must say no in order to find out who she is. The adolescent says no to assert who she is not.
Let none admire that riches grow in hell; that soil may best deserve the precious bane.
Conventions vs. spontaneity. This is a dialectical choice, it depends on the assessment you make of your own times. If you judge that your own time is ridden with empty insincere formalities, you plump for spontaneity, for indecorous behavior even...Much of morality is the task of compensating for one's age. One assumes unfashionable virtues, in an indecorous time. In a time hollowed out by decorum, one must school oneself in spontaneity.
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