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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.

Boris Pasternak

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
You are eternity’s hostage A captive of mine.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Forever Myself Prison Yourself
Most people experience love, without noticing that there is anything remarkable about it.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Experience Notice People Remark
As in an explosion, I would erupt with all the wonderful things I saw and understood in this world.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Erupt Explosion Myself Understand Wonderful World
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
Failure to love is almost like murder.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Death Failure Love Murder One Liner
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
I love you wildly, insanely, infinitely.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Forever I Love You One Liner Sanity Wild
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
We’re all time’s captives, hostages to eternity.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Deep Forever One Liner Prison Time
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
I am caught like a beast at bay. Somewhere are people, freedom, light, But all I hear is the baying of the pack, There is no way out for me.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Freedom Light Myself People
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
As far as modern writing is concerned, it is rarely rewarding to translate it, although it might be easy. Translation is very much like copying paintings.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Modern Paint Rare Translation Writing
Art is interested in life at the moment when the ray of power is passing through it.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Art Interest Moments Power
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
An unshared happiness is not happiness.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Happiness Share
Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Gift Greatness Life Ourselves
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.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Finding Herself Move Stand Stop
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
He was a natural, and in the Russian way, tragically above these banalities.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Himself Natural Tragedy
The last moments slipped by, one by one, irretrievable.
BORIS PASTERNAK

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

Deep Life Meaning Symbol
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.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Calm Myself Reach Religious Stand World
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

Himself Modern Society Survival Writing
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

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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They don’t ask much of you. They only want you to hate the things you love and to love the things you despise.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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