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
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!
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the insignificance of human existence in the vastness of space and time, while acknowledging the complexity and chaos of life.
In this thought-provoking quote by Ivan Turgenev, the author contemplates the stark contrast between the infinitesimal space that a person occupies and the boundless universe surrounding them. He emphasizes the triviality of a single human life when viewed against the backdrop of eternity, yet points to the intricate and chaotic nature of human existence, marked by desires and intellectual activity. This duality between the vast universe and the complexity of human life prompts a reflection on the meaning of existence itself.
Themes
ExistenceInsignificanceChaosLifeTimeUniverse
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a philosophical debate about the meaning of life during a classroom discussion.
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
Death's an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew.
Ivan TurgenevRead
I walked in the meadows of green grieving for my life.
Ivan TurgenevRead
Similar quotes
For, in truth, an image is only dead matter shaped by the craftsman's hand. But we have no sensible image of sensible matter, but an image that is perceived by the mind alone: God, who alone is truly God.
Clement Of AlexandriaRead
Imagine a poem written with such enormous three-dimensional words that we had to invent a smaller word to reference each of the big ones; that we had to rewrite the whole thing in shorthand, smashing it into two dimensions, just to talk about it. Or don’t imagine it. Look outside. Human language is our attempt at navigating God’s language; it is us running between the lines of His epic, climbing on the vowels and building houses out of the consonants.
N.D. WilsonRead
In general there is something puzzling about the fact that the most renowned figures in chess - Morphy, Pillsbury, Capablanca and Fischer - were born in America.
Garry KasparovRead
I don't really know if it's the right thing to do, making new life. Kids grow up, generations take their place. What does it all come to? More hills bulldozed and more ocean fronts filled in? Faster cars and more cats run over? Who needs it?
Haruki MurakamiRead
An army may be likened to water, for just as flowing water avoids the heights and hastens to the lowlands, so an army avoids strength and strikes weakness.
Sun TzuRead
He who imagines he can do without the world deceives himself much; but he who fancies the world cannot do without him is still more mistaken.
Francois De La RochefoucauldRead