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
So long as one's just dreaming about what to do, one can soar like an eagle and move mountains, it seems, but as soon as one starts doing it one gets worn out and tired.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Dreams can inspire us to envision great achievements, but taking action often reveals the challenges and fatigue involved.
This quote by Ivan Turgenev emphasizes the contrast between the idealism of dreaming and the reality of taking action. It suggests that while dreaming provides a sense of limitless potential, the process of pursuing those dreams can be exhausting and demanding, leading to fatigue and weariness. The realization that achieving great things requires effort and hard work can sometimes overshadow the initial thrill of dreaming.
Themes
DreamsActionEffortFatiguePotential
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about entrepreneurship.
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
People always ask about young people like me being forced into things. I play tennis because I love it. I think Russians might be tougher than other people. When I arrived in America I was young, but I already knew what I wanted. I think that when you start from nothing, when you come from nothing, it makes you hungry. I am proud of where I came from and I know what I want. I want to win.
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The best motivating is self-motivating. The guy says, "I wish someone would come by and turn me on. "What if they don't show up? You've got to have a better plan for your life."
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Lucky accidents seldom happen to writers who don't work. You will find that you may rewrite and rewrite a poem and it never seems quite right. Then a much better poem may come rather fast and you wonder why you bothered with all that work on the earlier poem. Actually, the hard work you do on one poem is put in on all poems. The hard work on the first poem is responsible for the sudden ease of the second. If you just sit around waiting for the easy ones, nothing will come. Get to work.
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Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand - and melting like a snowflake.
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At times some may think that no one cares--but someone always cares! Your Heavenly Father will not leave you to struggle alone, but stands ever ready to help.
Thomas S. MonsonRead
No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed. No stream or gas drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined.
Harry Emerson FosdickRead