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
To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True holiness comes from selflessness and empathy toward others.
This quote highlights the essence of genuine holiness as the ability to let go of personal desires and expectations while fostering deep compassion for others. Turgenev suggests that true virtue lies in selflessness and emotional connection with those around us, indicating that holiness is not about strict adherence to rituals but about how we relate to and care for others.
Themes
SelflessnessEmpathyHolinessCompassionAltruism
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about charity work, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of selfless giving.
More from Ivan Turgenev
All quotes →So many memories and so little worth remembering, and in front of me - a long, long road without a goal.
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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!
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Death's an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew.
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I walked in the meadows of green grieving for my life.
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