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
Ah, but in time the heat of noontide passes, and to it there succeed nightfall and dusk, with a return to the quiet fold where for the weary an the heavy-laden there waits sleep, sweet sleep.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the cyclical nature of life, emphasizing rest and tranquility after a period of struggle.
Ivan Turgenev's quote suggests that life's trials and tribulations, like the heat of the day, are not permanent. Just as day turns to night, bringing a time for rest and rejuvenation, so too do our burdens give way to peace and solace, with sleep symbolizing a necessary retreat from the weariness of existence.
In practice
In a speech about resilience, one might quote Turgenev to highlight the importance of finding peace after challenges.
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.
To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.
So many memories and so little worth remembering, and in front of me - a long, long road without a goal.
If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.
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!
Death's an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew.
I have spent my life going from mania to mania. Somehow it has all paid off.
My life will be the best illustration of all my work.
Ignoring fame was my rebellion, in a funny way. I was insistent on being normal and doing normal things. It probably wasn't advisable to go to college in America and room with a complete stranger. And it probably wasn't wise to share a bathroom with eight other people in a coed dorm. Looking back, that was crazy.
The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.
Life ought to be a struggle of desire toward adventures whose nobility will fertilize the soul.
We didn't have money all the time to do laundry. A lot of the time, we didn't have soap or hot water. We were smart kids academically, but we'd go to school smelling.
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