Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.
BORIS PASTERNAKSurprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.
BORIS PASTERNAKThe 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 PASTERNAKBut what are pity, conscience, or fear To the brazen pair, compared With the living sorcery Of their hot embraces?
BORIS PASTERNAKA corner draft fluttered the flame And the white fever of temptation Upswept its angel wings that cast A cruciform shadow.
BORIS PASTERNAKIn every generation there has to be some fool who will speak the truth as he sees it.
BORIS PASTERNAKI don’t like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn’t of much value. Life hasn’t revealed its beauty to them.
BORIS PASTERNAKThe most extraordinary discoveries are made when the artist is overwhelmed by what he has to say.
BORIS PASTERNAKOnly the solitary seek the truth, and they break with all those who don’t love it sufficiently.
BORIS PASTERNAKThe 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 PASTERNAKHow 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 PASTERNAKAnd 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 PASTERNAKIn life it is more necessary to lose than to gain. A seed will only germinate if it dies.
BORIS PASTERNAKI used to be very revolutionary, but now I think that nothing can be gained by brute force. People must be drawn to good by goodness.
BORIS PASTERNAKNo single man makes history. History cannot be seen just as one cannot see grass growing.
BORIS PASTERNAKThat’s metaphysics, my dear fellow. It’s forbidden me by my doctor, my stomach won’t take it.
BORIS PASTERNAKI have the impression that if he didn’t complicate his life so needlessly, he would die of boredom.
BORIS PASTERNAK