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
Whatever man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that prayers often express deep desires for extraordinary changes in life, reflecting on the nature of faith and hope.
Ivan Turgenev's quote highlights the essence of prayer as an expression of the human longing for change and miraculous events in life. It implies that each prayer embodies a wish for a miraculous solution to personal challenges, and as such, it acknowledges the often humble nature of these requests, stripping them down to the core of hope for something greater than ourselves.
Themes
PrayerMiracleHopeDesireFaith
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the power of belief during a community gathering.
More from Ivan Turgenev
All quotes →To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.
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So many memories and so little worth remembering, and in front of me - a long, long road without a goal.
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If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.
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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!
Ivan TurgenevRead
Death's an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew.
Ivan TurgenevRead
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Or you might shout at the top of your lungs or whisper into your sleeve, "I hate you, God." That is a prayer too, because it is real, it is truth, and maybe it is the first sincere thought you've had in months.
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Would that death were like this. Would that one would sleep and sleep and sleep forever.
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It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury; signifying nothing.
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Whatever is not done by the permission of Allah will not happen, and what is not done for the sake of Allah will not benefit or remain.
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