Welcome to our collection of quotes (with shareable picture quotes) by Boris Pasternak. We hope you enjoy pondering them and that you will share them widely.
Wikipedia Summary for Boris Pasternak
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (Russian: Бори́с Леони́дович Пастерна́к, IPA: [bɐˈrʲis lʲɪɐˈnʲidəvʲɪtɕ pəstɨrˈnak]; 10 February [O.S. 29 January] 1890 – 30 May 1960) was a Russian poet, novelist, and literary translator. Composed in 1917, Pasternak's first book of poems, My Sister, Life, was published in Berlin in 1922 and soon became an important collection in the Russian language. Pasternak's translations of stage plays by Goethe, Schiller, Calderón de la Barca and Shakespeare remain very popular with Russian audiences.
Pasternak is the author of Doctor Zhivago (1957), a novel that takes place between the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the Second World War. Doctor Zhivago was rejected for publication in the USSR, but the manuscript was smuggled to Italy for publication. Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958, an event that enraged the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which forced him to decline the prize, though in 1989 his descendants were able to accept it in his name. Doctor Zhivago has been part of the main Russian school curriculum since 2003.
A boat came in; the cliff was baked; the noisy boat-chain fell and clanked on the sand-an iron rattle-snake, a rattling rust among the plankton.
How I remember solstice days Through many winters long completed! Each unrepeatable, unique And each one countless times repeated.
And when the war broke out, its real horrors, its real dangers, its menace of real death were a blessing compared with the inhuman reign of the lie, and they brought relief because they broke the spell of the dead letter.
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.
A corner draft fluttered the flame And the white fever of temptation Upswept its angel wings that cast A cruciform shadow.
I don't like purely philosophical works. I think a little philosophy should be added to life and art by way of seasoning, but to make it one's specialty seems to me as strange as eating nothing but horseradish. -- Lara, from Doctor Zhivago.
How wonderful to be alive, he thought. But why does it always hurt?
I have the impression that if he didn't complicate his life so needlessly, he would die of boredom.
And why is it, thought Lara, that my fate is to see everything and take it all so much to heart?
To be a woman is a great adventure; To drive men mad is a heroic thing.
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.
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.
Art is interested in life at the moment when the ray of power is passing through it.
Yet the order of the acts is planned And the end of the way inescapable. I am alone; all drowns in the Pharisees' hypocrisy.
I am alone; all drowns in the Pharisees' hypocrisy. To live your life is not as simple as to cross a field.
In every generation there has to be some fool who will speak the truth as he sees it.
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.
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.
Most people experience love, without noticing that there is anything remarkable about it.
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.
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.
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.
This was the sickness of the age, the revolutionary madness of the epoch. In thought everyone was different from his words and outward show. No one had a clear conscience. Each with good reason could feel himself guilty, a secret criminal, an unexposed deceiver.
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.
The whole of life is symbolic because the whole of it has meaning.
Farewell, my great one, my own, farewell, my pride, farewell, my swift, deep, dear river, how I loved your daylong splashing, how I loved to plunge into your cold waves.
Our evenings are farewells. Our parties are testaments. So that the secret stream of suffering. May warm the cold of life.
They loved each other, not driven by necessity, by the blaze of passion often falsely ascribed to love. They loved each other because everything around them willed it, the trees and the clouds and the sky over their heads and the earth under their feet.
Her dark hair was scattered and its beauty stung his eyes like smoke and ate into his heart.
She was obsessed with the idea of breaking with everything she had ever known or experienced, and starting on something new.
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.
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.
At the moment of childbirth, every woman has the same aura of isolation, as though she were abandoned, alone.
No bad man can be a good poet.
You fall into my arms. You are the good gift of destruction's path, When life sickens more than disease. And boldness is the root of beauty. Which draws us together.
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.
That's metaphysics, my dear fellow. It's forbidden me by my doctor, my stomach won't take it.
What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup.
What for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth.
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.
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.
Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.
Man is born to live and not to prepare to live.
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.
Love is not weakness. It is strong. Only the sacrament of marriage can contain it.