Boris Pasternak Quotes

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

Life, Beauty, Value

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, Light, Darkness

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

Art, Saying, Words

Immensely grateful, touched, proud, astonished, abashed.
Boris Pasternak

Proud, Grateful, Touched

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.
Boris Pasternak

Life, Beauty, Good

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

Live, Born, Prepare

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.
Boris Pasternak

Love, Strong, Deep

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

Life, Great, Art

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

Love, Hate, Ask

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, Power, Truth

At the moment of childbirth, every woman has the same aura of isolation, as though she were abandoned, alone.
Boris Pasternak

Alone, Woman, Same

No bad man can be a good poet.
Boris Pasternak

Good, Bad, Poet

Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.
Boris Pasternak

Life, Greatest, Gift

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

Life, Truth, Down

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

Writing, Easy, Far

As in an explosion, I would erupt with all the wonderful things I saw and understood in this world.
Boris Pasternak

Wonderful, Understood, Explosion

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

Poetry, Simple, Down

In view of the meaning given to this honor in the community to which I belong, I should abstain from the undeserved prize that has been awarded to me. Do not meet my voluntary refusal with ill will.
Boris Pasternak

Honor, Meaning, Community

Love is not weakness. It is strong. Only the sacrament of marriage can contain it.
Boris Pasternak

Anniversary, Love, Marriage

That's metaphysics, my dear fellow. It's forbidden me by my doctor, my stomach won't take it.
Boris Pasternak

Won, Doctor, Fellow

What for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth.
Boris Pasternak

Power, Truth, Above

Work is the order of the day, just as it was at one time, with our first starts and our best efforts. Do you remember? Therein lies its delight. It brings back the forgotten; one's stores of energy, seemingly exhausted, come back to life.
Boris Pasternak

Life, Work, Time

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Biography

Nationality: Russian

Born: February 10, 1890

Died: May 30, 1960

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Cite this Page: Citation

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