Boris Pasternak Quotes

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

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.

Yet the order of the acts is planned And the end of the way inescapable. I am alone; all drowns in the Pharisees' hypocrisy.

Oh, what a love it was, utterly free, unique, like nothing else on earth! Their thoughts were like other people's songs.

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.

Our evenings are farewells. Our parties are testaments. So that the secret stream of suffering. May warm the cold of life.

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

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.

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.

We're all time's captives, hostages to eternity.

I have the impression that if he didn't complicate his life so needlessly, he would die of boredom.

But the division in him was a sorrow and a torment, and he became accustomed to it only as one gets used to an unhealed and frequently reopened wound.

If you want to know, life is the principle of self-renewal, it is constantly renewing and remaking and changing and transfiguring itself.

The last moments slipped by, one by one, irretrievable.

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.

We must discover security within ourselves.

No bad man can be a good poet.

I am alone; all drowns in the Pharisees' hypocrisy. To live your life is not as simple as to cross a field.

Departure beyond the borders of my country is for me equivalent to death.

During the last years of Mayakovski's life, when all poetry had ceased to exist . . . literature had stopped.

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.

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.

Gregariousness is always the refuge of mediocrities, whether they swear by Soloviev or Kant or Marx. Only individuals seek the truth, and they shun those whose sole concern is not the truth.

But what are pity, conscience, or fear To the brazen pair, compared With the living sorcery Of their hot embraces?

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

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.

But who are we, where do we come from When all those years Nothing but idle talk is left And we are nowhere in the world?" = MEETING =

No single man makes history. History cannot be seen just as one cannot see grass growing.

For life, too, is only an instant, Only the dissolving of ourselvesIn the selves of all othersAs if bestowing a gift –

There shall be no more death, Because we have already seen all that, Its old and we are tired of it, And now we need something new, And this new thing is Eternal Life

Only the familiar transformed by genius is truly great.

Every herd is a refuge for giftlessness, whether it's a faith in Soloviev, or Kant, or Marx. Only the solitary seek the truth, and they break with all those who don't love it sufficiently.

Man is born to live and not to prepare to live.

Her dark hair was scattered and its beauty stung his eyes like smoke and ate into his heart.

You said that facts are meaningless, unless meanings are put into them. Well, Christianity, the mystery of the individual, is precisely what must be put into the facts to make them meaningful.

But who are we, where do we come fromWhen all those yearsNothing but idle talk is leftAnd we are nowhere in the world?"= MEETING =

For a moment she rediscovered the purpose of life. She was here on earth to grasp the meaning of its wild enchantment and to call each thing by its right name

Man is born to live, not to prepare for life. Life itself, the phenomenon of life, the gift of life, is so breath-takingly serious!

No one makes history, no one sees it happen, no one sees the grass grow.

In a single wave of meaning the triumphant purity of being.