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A corner draft fluttered the flame And the white fever of temptation Upswept its angel wings that cast A cruciform shadow.

Boris Pasternak

They don’t ask much of you. They only want you to hate the things you love and to love the things you despise.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Hate Love Yourself
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

Modern Paint Rare Translation Writing
What for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Man Power Resist Truth
He was a natural, and in the Russian way, tragically above these banalities.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Himself Natural Tragedy
Oh, what a love it was, utterly free, unique, like nothing else on earth! Their thoughts were like other people’s songs.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Earth Freedom Love People Thinking Unique
Art is unthinkable without risk and spiritual self-sacrifice.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Art Risk Sacrifice Spiritual Thinking
How wonderful to be alive, he thought. But why does it always hurt?
BORIS PASTERNAK

Alive Hurt Thinking
I come here to speak poetry. It will always be in the grass. It will also be necessary to bend down to hear it. It will always be too simple to be discussed in assemblies.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Discussion Necessary Poetry Simplicity Talk
An unshared happiness is not happiness.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Happiness Share
It is no longer possible for lyric poetry to express the immensity of our experience. Life has grown too cumbersome, too complicated. We have acquired values which are best expressed in prose.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Best Complication Expression Lyrics Poetry Possible Value
If you want to know, life is the principle of self-renewal, it is constantly renewing and remaking and changing and transfiguring itself.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Change Figure Life Principle
The writer is the Faust of modern society, the only surviving individualist in a mass age. To his orthodox contemporaries he seems a semi-madman.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Himself Modern Society Survival Writing
She was here on earth to make sense of its wild enchantments.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Earth Enchant Herself Magic Wild
No bad man can be a good poet.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Bad Goodness Man One Liner Poet
Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Gift Greatness Life Ourselves
Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Art Discover Extraordinary Literature People Word

A corner draft fluttered the flame And the white fever of temptation Upswept its angel wings that cast A cruciform shadow.

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A corner draft fluttered the flame And the white fever of temptation Upswept its angel wings that cast A cruciform shadow.

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Popular Authors

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