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
Man associates ideas not according to logic or verifiable exactitude, but according to his pleasure and interests. It is for this reason that most truths are nothing but prejudices.
Remy De GourmontRead
People always clap for the wrong reasons.
J. D. SalingerRead
War is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
Smedley ButlerRead
If your busy with yourself now, you will be busy with yourself then. If you are busy with Allah now, you will be with Him then.
Al-GhazaliRead
I am a fragment of a mirror whose whole design and shape I do not know. Nevertheless, with what I have - I can reflect light into the dark places of this world - into the black places in the hearts of men - and change somethings in some people. Perhaps others may see and do likewise. This is what I am about. This is the meaning of my life.
Robert FulghumRead
The real history of consciousness starts with one's first lie.
Joseph BrodskyRead