Boris Pasternak quotes - page 2

If it is so painful to love and to be charged with this electric current, how much more painful must it be to a woman and to be the current, and to inspire love. (Boris Pasternak)
And so it turned out that only a life similar to the life of those around us, merging with it without a ripple, is genuine life, and that an unshared happiness is not happiness...
Boris Pasternak
I don't think I could love you so much if you had nothing to complain of and nothing to regret. I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and of little value. Life hasn't revealed it's beauty to them.
Boris Pasternak
The main misfortune, the root of all evil to come, was loss of the confidence in the value of one's own opinion. People imagined that it was out of date of follow their own moral sense, that they must all sing in chorus, and live by other people's notions, notions that were crammed down everybody's throat.
Boris Pasternak
When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beating of your heart, and it is very easy to miss it.
Boris Pasternak
As for the men in power, they are so anxious to establish the myth of infallibility that they do their utmost to ignore truth.
Boris Pasternak
And remember: you must never, under any circumstances, despair. To hope and to act, these are our duties in misfortune.
Boris Pasternak
Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.
Boris Pasternak
Salvation lies not in the faithfulness to forms, but in the liberation from them.
Boris Pasternak
Only the solitary seek the truth, and they break with all those who don't love it sufficiently.
Boris Pasternak
Love is not weakness. It is strong. Only the sacrament of marriage can contain it. (Boris Pasternak)
You fall into my arms. You are the good gift of destruction's path, When life sickens more than disease. And boldness is the root of beauty. Which draws us together.
Boris Pasternak
Art has two constant, two unending concerns: It always meditates on death and thus always creates life. All great, genuine art resembles and continues the Revelation of St John.
Boris Pasternak
No bad man can be a good poet.
Boris Pasternak
At the moment of childbirth, every woman has the same aura of isolation, as though she were abandoned, alone.
Boris Pasternak
As far as modern writing is concerned, it is rarely rewarding to translate it, although it might be easy. Translation is very much like copying paintings.
Boris Pasternak
As in an explosion, I would erupt with all the wonderful things I saw and understood in this world.
Boris Pasternak
He is her glory. Any woman could say it. For every one of them, God is in her child. Mothers of great men must have been familiar with this feeling, but then, all women are mothers of great men -- it isn't their fault if life disappoints them later.
Boris Pasternak
The great majority of us are required to live a life of constant, systematic duplicity. Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel before what you dislike and rejoice at what bring you nothing but misfortune. Our nervous system isn't just a fiction, it's part of our physical body, and our soul exists in space and is inside us, like teeth in our mouth. It can't be forever violated with impunity.
Boris Pasternak
Am I a gangster or a murderer? Of what crime do I stand Condemned? I made the whole world weep At the beauty of my land.
Boris Pasternak
Like a beast in a pen, I'm cut off From my friends, freedom, the Sun. But the hunters are gaining ground; I've nowhere else to run. (Boris Pasternak)
Gregariousness is always the refuge of mediocrities, whether they swear by Solovyov or Kant or Marx. Only individuals seek the truth.
Boris Pasternak
To be a woman is a great adventure; To drive men mad is a heroic thing.
Boris Pasternak
Don't sleep, don't sleep, artist, Don't give in to sleep. You are eternity's hostage A captive of time.
Boris Pasternak
Snow, snow over the whole land across all boundaries. The candle burned on the table, the candle burned.
Boris Pasternak