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 PASTERNAKSurprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.
More Boris Pasternak Quotes
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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.
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Our evenings are farewells. Our parties are testaments. So that the secret stream of suffering. May warm the cold of life.
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But what are pity, conscience, or fear To the brazen pair, compared With the living sorcery Of their hot embraces?
BORIS PASTERNAK -
Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
He was a natural, and in the Russian way, tragically above these banalities.
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In life it is more necessary to lose than to gain. A seed will only germinate if it dies.
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Art is unthinkable without risk and spiritual self-sacrifice.
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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.
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Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.
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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.
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The last moments slipped by, one by one, irretrievable.
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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 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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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 -
What for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth.
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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 -
No single man makes history. History cannot be seen just as one cannot see grass growing.
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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.
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Art always serves beauty, and beauty is the joy of possessing form, and form is the key to organic life since no living thing can exist without it.
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They don’t ask much of you. They only want you to hate the things you love and to love the things you despise.
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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.
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As in an explosion, I would erupt with all the wonderful things I saw and understood in this world.
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Mother Russia is on the move, she can’t stand still, she’s restless and can’t find rest, she’s talking and she can’t stop.
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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 -
To be a woman is a great adventure; To drive men mad is a heroic thing.
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