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The most extraordinary discoveries are made when the artist is overwhelmed by what he has to say.

Boris Pasternak

The whole of life is symbolic because the whole of it has meaning.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Deep Life Meaning Symbol
To be a woman is a great adventure; To drive men mad is a heroic thing.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Adventure Greatness Hero Madness Woman
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
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

Existence Himself Inheritance Love People Remember
How wonderful to be alive, he thought. But why does it always hurt?
BORIS PASTERNAK

Alive Hurt Thinking
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
All mothers are mothers of great people, and it is not their fault that life later disappoints them.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Disappoint Greatness Life Mom
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
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
Love is not weakness. It is strong. Only the sacrament of marriage can contain it.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Love Marriage Sacred Weakness
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
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
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
Failure to love is almost like murder.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Death Failure Love Murder One Liner
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
Art is unthinkable without risk and spiritual self-sacrifice.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Art Risk Sacrifice Spiritual Thinking
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
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
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
No single man makes history. History cannot be seen just as one cannot see grass growing.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Growth History Man Sight
If you want to know, life is the principle of self-renewal, it is constantly renewing and remaking and changing and transfiguring itself.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Change Figure Life Principle
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
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
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
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.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Art Beautiful Existence Joy Key Organic Serve
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
The unarmed power of naked truth.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Arm Naked One Liner Power Truth

The most extraordinary discoveries are made when the artist is overwhelmed by what he has to say.

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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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