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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

An unshared happiness is not happiness.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Happiness Share
Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation’s tears in shoulder blades.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Blade Creation Poetry Rich Tears
And remember: you must never, under any circumstances, despair. To hope and to act, these are our duties in misfortune.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Act Circumstance Hope Misfortune Remember
Art is unthinkable without risk and spiritual self-sacrifice.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Art Risk Sacrifice Spiritual Thinking
In every generation there has to be some fool who will speak the truth as he sees it.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Fools Generation Himself Talk Truth
How many things in the world deserve our loyalty? Very few indeed. I think one should be loyal to immortality, which is another word for life, a stronger word for it.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Deserve Immortal Life Loyalty Strong World
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
Immensely grateful, touched, proud, astonished, abashed.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Astonish Gratitude Proud Touch
In life it is more necessary to lose than to gain. A seed will only germinate if it dies.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Death Life Lose Necessary
I hate everything you say, but not enough to kill you for it.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Enough Hate Kill Myself Yourself
And why is it, thought Lara, that my fate is to see everything and take it all so much to heart?
BORIS PASTERNAK

Fate Feeling Heart Myself Sensitive
Man is born to live, not to prepare for life.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Born Life Live Man Preparation
Salvation lies not in the faithfulness to forms, but in the liberation from them.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Faith Form Liberty Loyalty Lying
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

Establishment Ignorance Man Myth Power
But the division in him was a sorrow and a torment, and he became accustomed to it only as one gets used to an unhealed and frequently reopened wound.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Accustom Division Healing Sorrow Torture Wound
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

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

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

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Popular Authors

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