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 PASTERNAKHe 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.
More Boris Pasternak Quotes
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No single man makes history. History cannot be seen just as one cannot see grass growing.
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 -
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 -
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 -
And why is it, thought Lara, that my fate is to see everything and take it all so much to heart?
BORIS PASTERNAK -
Our evenings are farewells. Our parties are testaments. So that the secret stream of suffering. May warm the cold of life.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
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 -
The whole wide world is a cathedral; I stand inside, the air is calm, And from afar at times there reaches My ear the echo of a psalm.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
Immensely grateful, touched, proud, astonished, abashed.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
In every generation there has to be some fool who will speak the truth as he sees it.
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 -
It snowed and snowed, the whole world over, Snow swept the world from end to end. A candle burned on the table; A candle burned.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
Art is unthinkable without risk and spiritual self-sacrifice.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
In life it is more necessary to lose than to gain. A seed will only germinate if it dies.
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 -
Only the solitary seek the truth, and they break with all those who don’t love it sufficiently.
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 -
It is not the object described that matters, but the light that falls on it.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
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 -
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 -
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 -
Failure to love is almost like murder.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
That’s metaphysics, my dear fellow. It’s forbidden me by my doctor, my stomach won’t take it.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
I love you wildly, insanely, infinitely.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
And remember: you must never, under any circumstances, despair. To hope and to act, these are our duties in misfortune.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
The unarmed power of naked truth.
BORIS PASTERNAK