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
We’re young, we’re not monsters, no fools: we’ll conquer happiness for ourselves.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the determination of youth to actively pursue their own happiness and fulfillment.
In this quote, Turgenev reflects on the vibrancy and ambition of youth, suggesting that they are neither foolish nor malevolent. Instead, they possess the clarity and intent to seek out happiness for themselves, embodying a proactive approach to life that highlights the importance of personal agency in the pursuit of fulfillment.
Themes
HappinessYouthPursuitFulfillmentAgency
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational speech about self-determination and happiness.
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
It is amazing what one ray of sunshine can do for a man!
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
Money doesn't buy happiness. Some people say it's a heck of a down payment, though.
Denzel WashingtonRead
Pleasure is often spoiled by describing it.
StendhalRead
Success does not mean happiness. Check out any celebrity magazine to look for examples to disabuse you of thinking that being beautiful, successful or rich will make you happy.
Shawn AchorRead
A swift carriage, of a dark night, rattling with four horses over roads that one can’t see--that’s my idea of happiness.
Henry JamesRead
Let us toast to animal pleasures, to escapism, to rain on the roof and instant coffee, to unemployment insurance and library cards, to absinthe and good-hearted landlords, to music and warm bodies and contraceptives... and to the "good life", whatever it is and wherever it happens to be.
Hunter S. ThompsonRead