Boris Pasternak Quotes

60 Sourced Quotes

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

Boris Pasternak
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
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
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
Like a beast in a pen, I'm cut off
From my friends, freedom, the Sun.
But the hunters are gaining ground;
I've nowhere else to run.

Boris Pasternak
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.

Boris Pasternak
In time to come, I tell them, we'll be equal
to any living now. If cripples, then
no matter; we shall just have been run over
by 'New Man' in the wagon of his 'Plan'.

Boris Pasternak
It snowed and snowed, the whole world over,
Snow swept the world from end to end.
A candle burned on the table;
A candle burned.

Boris Pasternak
The great majority of us are required to live a life of constant duplicity. Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel before what you dislike, and rejoice at what brings you nothing but misfortune. Our nervous system isn't just a fiction, it's part of our physical body, and our souls exists in space and is inside us, like the teeth in the mouth. It can't forever be violated with impunity.

Boris Pasternak
Gregariousness is always the refuge of mediocrities, whether they swear by Solovyov or Kant or Marx. Only individuals seek the truth.

Boris Pasternak
Oh, how one wishes sometimes to escape from the meaningless dullness of human eloquence, from all those sublime phrases, to take refuge in nature, apparently so inarticulate, or in the wordlessness of long, grinding labor, of sound sleep, of true music, or of a human understanding rendered speechless by emotion!

Boris Pasternak
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
You are eternity's hostage
A captive of time.

Boris Pasternak
If it is so painful to love and to be charged with this electric current, how much more painful must it be to a woman and to be the current, and to inspire love.

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.

Boris Pasternak
A candle burned on the table, a candle burned... he whispered to himself — the beginning of something confused, formless; he hoped that it would take shape of itself. But nothing more came to him.

Boris Pasternak
Art is interested in life at the moment when the ray of power is passing through it.

Boris Pasternak
The snow was falling soft and slow
From land to land.
A candle flamed upon a table;
A candle flamed.

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

Boris Pasternak
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.

Boris Pasternak
One day Lara went out and did not come back…She died or vanished somewhere, forgotten as a nameless number on a list which was afterwards mislaid.

Boris Pasternak
Most people experience love, without noticing that there is anything remarkable about it.

Boris Pasternak
With an awful, dreadful list Towards other galaxies unknown Ponderously turns the Milky Way.

Boris Pasternak
It was not until after the coming of Christ that time and humans could breathe freely. It was not until after him that people began to live toward the future. Humans do not die in a ditch like a dog-but at home in history, while the work toward the conquest of death is in full swing; they die sharing in this work.

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

Boris Pasternak
And there, with frightful listing Through emptiness, away Through unknown solar systems Revolves the Milky Way.

Boris Pasternak
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.

Boris Pasternak
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.

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

Boris Pasternak