He comes as a guest to the feast of existence, and knows that what matters is not how much he inherits but how he behaves at the feast, and what people remember and love him for.
BORIS PASTERNAKBut 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.
More Boris Pasternak Quotes
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Failure to love is almost like murder.
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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.
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That’s metaphysics, my dear fellow. It’s forbidden me by my doctor, my stomach won’t take it.
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Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.
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I 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 PASTERNAK -
The unarmed power of naked truth.
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We must discover security within ourselves.
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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 -
Oh, what a love it was, utterly free, unique, like nothing else on earth! Their thoughts were like other people’s songs.
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No bad man can be a good poet.
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But what are pity, conscience, or fear To the brazen pair, compared With the living sorcery Of their hot embraces?
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Departure beyond the borders of my country is for me equivalent to death.
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Yet the order of the acts is planned And the end of the way inescapable. I am alone; all drowns in the Pharisees’ hypocrisy.
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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 -
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.
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To be a woman is a great adventure; To drive men mad is a heroic thing.
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Art is unthinkable without risk and spiritual self-sacrifice.
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You are eternity’s hostage A captive of mine.
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.
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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.
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And why is it, thought Lara, that my fate is to see everything and take it all so much to heart?
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In every generation there has to be some fool who will speak the truth as he sees it.
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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.
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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.
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The most extraordinary discoveries are made when the artist is overwhelmed by what he has to say.
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And remember: you must never, under any circumstances, despair. To hope and to act, these are our duties in misfortune.
BORIS PASTERNAK