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
However much you knock at nature's door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Nature is indifferent to human communication and understanding.
This quote suggests that while humans may seek to understand and communicate with nature, it remains elusive and does not respond in a way that can be easily understood. It implies a certain limit to human comprehension in the face of the vastness and complexity of the natural world.
Themes
NatureCommunicationUnderstandingPhilosophyElusiveness
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a discussion about the limitations of human knowledge in scientific fields.
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
Death's an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew.
Ivan TurgenevRead
Similar quotes
Strangely enough, they have a mind to till the soil, and the love of possessions is a disease in them.
Sitting BullRead
You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Max EhrmannRead
Though we travel the world over to find beauty, we must carry it with us or we find it not . . . The difference between landscape and landscape is small, but there is a great difference in beholders.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead
To ask "Where in your brain is intelligence?" is like asking "Where is the voice in the radio?"
Howard GardnerRead
What, then is law [government]? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.
Frederic BastiatRead
If one is devoid of hope and thanksgiving, he cannot for long remain sinless, for he will, in despair, have slackened his resolve. Feelings of futility foster vulnerability. Self-pity is such a busy stagehand, rearranging the scenery to help sin make its entrance. No wonder the prophets say that without faith in the Lord, there is no hope.
Neal A. MaxwellRead