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.
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
A strong nation is one that is loved by its people and, as Edmund Burke put it, for a country to be loved it ought to be lovely.
Ronald ReaganRead
No citizen enjoys genuine freedom of religious conviction until the state is indifferent to every form of religious outlook from Atheism to Zoroastrianism.
Harold LaskiRead
I think that there are real concerns that we have around whose life is important and why. So if the official story is, for example, somebody was running from the police, does their life matter?
Alicia GarzaRead
You who let yourselves feel: enter the breathing _x000D_ That is more than your own. _x000D_ Let it brush your cheeks _x000D_ As it divides and rejoins behind you. _x000D_ _x000D_ The trees you planted in childhood have grown _x000D_ Too heavy. You cannot bring them along. _x000D_ Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold.
Rainer Maria RilkeRead
The great home of the soul is the open road.
D. H. LawrenceRead
The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for the rest of your life. And the most important thing is, it must be something you cannot possibly do.
Henry MooreRead