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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.

Boris Pasternak

He was a natural, and in the Russian way, tragically above these banalities.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Himself Natural Tragedy
At the moment of childbirth, every woman has the same aura of isolation, as though she were abandoned, alone.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Alone Isolation Moments Woman
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

Arms Beautiful Bold Draw Fall Gift Goodness Togetherness Yourself
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

Age Change Discover Existence Guest Ourselves Science Security Travel War World
That’s metaphysics, my dear fellow. It’s forbidden me by my doctor, my stomach won’t take it.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Funny Myself Science Stomach
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

Beautiful Fall Myself People Reveal Value Virtue
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

Burn Candle Deep Snow World
But what are pity, conscience, or fear To the brazen pair, compared With the living sorcery Of their hot embraces?
BORIS PASTERNAK

Conscience Embrace Fear Live
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
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
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

Best Complication Expression Lyrics Poetry Possible Value
Yet the order of the acts is planned And the end of the way inescapable. I am alone; all drowns in the Pharisees’ hypocrisy.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Act End Escape Hypocrisy One Liner Order Planning
Salvation lies not in the faithfulness to forms, but in the liberation from them.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Faith Form Liberty Loyalty Lying
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

Genuine Happiness Life Share
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
No deep and strong feeling, such as we may come across here and there in the world, is unmixed with compassion. The more we love, the more the object of our love seems to us to be a victim.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Compassionate Feeling Object Ourselves Strong Victim

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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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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Popular Authors

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