Boris Pasternak Quotes

Quotes about:

Art Death Earth Feelings Heart Immortality Inspirational

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

Inspirational, Heart, Opportunity

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An unshared happiness is not happiness.

Boris Pasternak

Roger Martin du Gard, Boris Leonidovich Pasternak, Gabriela Mistral (1971). “Roger Martin du Gard: Gabriela Mistral ; Boris Pasternak”

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I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn't of much value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.

Boris Pasternak

Inspirational, Life, Failure

Doctor Zhivago ch. 13 (1958) (translation by Max Hayward and Manya Harari)

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Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.

Boris Pasternak

Art, People, Ordinary

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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.

Boris Pasternak

Men, Anxious, Myth

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And remember: you must never, under any circumstances, despair. To hope and to act, these are our duties in misfortune.

Boris Pasternak

Remember You, Remembers You, Despair

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In life it is more necessary to lose than to gain. A seed will only germinate if it dies.

Boris Pasternak

Loss, Gains, Seeds

Roger Martin du Gard, Boris Leonidovich Pasternak, Gabriela Mistral (1971). “Roger Martin du Gard: Gabriela Mistral ; Boris Pasternak”

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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

Hate, Want, Despise

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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

Loyalty, Thinking, Stronger

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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

Thinking, People, Revolutionary

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Man is born to live, not to prepare for life.

Boris Pasternak

Life, Journey, Men

Doctor Zhivago ch. 9 (1958) (translation by Max Hayward and Manya Harari)

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It is not the object described that matters, but the light that falls on it.

Boris Pasternak

Fall, Writing, Light

Christopher Barnes, Christopher J. Barnes, Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (2004). “Boris Pasternak: A Literary Biography”, p.363, Cambridge University Press

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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.

Boris Pasternak

Time, Believe, Light

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak, Jon Stallworthy, Peter France (1983). “Selected poems”, Lane, Allen

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She was here on earth to make sense of its wild enchantments.

Boris Pasternak

Enchantment, Earth, Make Sense

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To be a woman is a great adventure; To drive men mad is a heroic thing.

Boris Pasternak

Adventure, Men, Mad

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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

Change, War, Learning

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Reshaping life! People who can say that have never understood a thing about life—they have never felt its breath, its heartbeat—however much they have seen or done. They look on it as a lump of raw material that needs to be processed by them, to be ennobled by their touch. But life is never a material, a substance to be molded. If you want to know, life is the principle of self-renewal, it is constantly renewing and remaking and changing and transfiguring itself, it is infinitely beyond your or my obtuse theories about it.

Boris Pasternak

Self, People, Principles

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

Boris Pasternak

Artist, Discovery, Overwhelmed

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (1976). “My sister, life and other poems”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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Only the solitary seek the truth, and they break with all those who don't love it sufficiently

Boris Pasternak

Break, Doctor Zhivago, Solitary

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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

Writing, Age, Faust

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Here they are, all in one place. Circle back to them when you need some poetic shine.
It is not revolutions and upheavals that clear the road to better days,
but revelations, and lavishness of someone's soul inspired, and ablaze.

Boris Pasternak

Inspirational, Circles, Shining

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Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.

Boris Pasternak

Life, Leadership, Morning

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (1959). “Poetry, 1917-1959”

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And now listen carefully. You in others-this is your soul. This is what you are. This is what your consciousness has breathed and lived on and enjoyed throughout your life-your soul, your immortality, your life in others. And what now? You have always been in others and you will remain in others. And what does it matter to you if later on that is called your memory? This will be you-the you that enters the future and becomes a part of it.

Boris Pasternak

Memories, Soul, Matter

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In every generation there has to be some fool who will speak the truth as he sees it.

Boris Pasternak

Truth, Generations, Fool

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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

Simple, Speak, Assembly

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Boris Pasternak

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Born: February 10, 1890
Died: May 30, 1960
Occupation: Poet
Cite this Page: Citation

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