He realised, more vividly than ever before, that art had two constant, two unending preoccupations: it is always meditating upon death and it is always thereby creating life.
BORIS PASTERNAKAnd why is it, thought Lara, that my fate is to see everything and take it all so much to heart?
More Boris Pasternak Quotes
-
-
In every generation there has to be some fool who will speak the truth as he sees it.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
She was here on earth to make sense of its wild enchantments.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
In this era of world wars, in this atomic age, values have changed. We have learned that we are guests of existence, travelers between two stations. We must discover security within ourselves.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
An unshared happiness is not happiness.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
In life it is more necessary to lose than to gain. A seed will only germinate if it dies.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
Even so, one step from my grave, I believe that cruelty, spite, The powers of darkness will in time Be crushed by the spirit of light.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
Art always serves beauty, and beauty is the joy of possessing form, and form is the key to organic life since no living thing can exist without it.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.
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 -
Mother Russia is on the move, she can’t stand still, she’s restless and can’t find rest, she’s talking and she can’t stop.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.
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 -
Salvation lies not in the faithfulness to forms, but in the liberation from them.
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 -
Oh, what a love it was, utterly free, unique, like nothing else on earth! Their thoughts were like other people’s songs.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
All mothers are mothers of great people, and it is not their fault that life later disappoints them.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
Love is not weakness. It is strong. Only the sacrament of marriage can contain it.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
If it’s so painful to love and absorb electricity, how much more painful it is to be a woman, to be the electricity, to inspire love.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
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 -
Only the solitary seek the truth, and they break with all those who don’t love it sufficiently.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
A corner draft fluttered the flame And the white fever of temptation Upswept its angel wings that cast A cruciform shadow.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
Art is unthinkable without risk and spiritual self-sacrifice.
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 -
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 -
I have the impression that if he didn’t complicate his life so needlessly, he would die of boredom.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
We’re all time’s captives, hostages to eternity.
BORIS PASTERNAK