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 PASTERNAKHow wonderful to be alive, he thought. But why does it always hurt?
More Boris Pasternak Quotes
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She was here on earth to make sense of its wild enchantments.
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All mothers are mothers of great people, and it is not their fault that life later disappoints them.
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Even so, one step from my grave, I believe that cruelty, spite, The powers of darkness will in time Be crushed by the spirit of light.
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Oh, what a love it was, utterly free, unique, like nothing else on earth! Their thoughts were like other people’s songs.
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The last moments slipped by, one by one, irretrievable.
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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.
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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 -
The unarmed power of naked truth.
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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.
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Love is not weakness. It is strong. Only the sacrament of marriage can contain it.
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Art is unthinkable without risk and spiritual self-sacrifice.
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A corner draft fluttered the flame And the white fever of temptation Upswept its angel wings that cast A cruciform shadow.
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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 -
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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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