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What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup.

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

Best Complication Expression Lyrics Poetry Possible Value
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

Hate Love Yourself
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

Discussion Necessary Poetry Simplicity Talk
It is not the object described that matters, but the light that falls on it.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Description Fall Light Object
I have the impression that if he didn’t complicate his life so needlessly, he would die of boredom.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Boredom Complication Death Impression Need
We must discover security within ourselves.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Discover Ourselves Security
You and I, it’s as though we have been taught to kiss in heaven and sent down to earth together, to see if we know what we were taught.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Heaven Kissing Myself Teaching
Only the solitary seek the truth, and they break with all those who don’t love it sufficiently.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Break Enough Seek Solitary Truth
Salvation lies not in the faithfulness to forms, but in the liberation from them.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Faith Form Liberty Loyalty Lying
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

Deep Electricity Love Pain Woman
You are eternity’s hostage A captive of mine.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Forever Myself Prison Yourself
Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Art Discover Extraordinary Literature People Word
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

Easy Great Heart Knock Life Missing Moments Yourself
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 PASTERNAK

Art Death Life Meditation Occupation Realization
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
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
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

Art Constant Creation Life Meditation Resemble
In life it is more necessary to lose than to gain. A seed will only germinate if it dies.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Death Life Lose Necessary
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

Deserve Immortal Life Loyalty Strong World
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
Oh, what a love it was, utterly free, unique, like nothing else on earth! Their thoughts were like other people’s songs.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Earth Freedom Love People Thinking Unique
I 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 PASTERNAK

Character Force Goodness Myself Revolution Thinking
What for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Man Power Resist Truth
Most people experience love, without noticing that there is anything remarkable about it.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Experience Notice People Remark
And remember: you must never, under any circumstances, despair. To hope and to act, these are our duties in misfortune.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Act Circumstance Hope Misfortune Remember
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

Establishment Ignorance Man Myth Power
What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Enough Life Order Truth

What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup.

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What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup.

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