Quotes from Boris Pasternak

The main misfortune, the root of all the evil to come, was the loss of confidence in the value of one's own opinion. People imagined that it was out of date to follow their own moral sense, that they must all sing in chorus, and live by other people's notions, notions that were being crammed down everybody's throat.

The wood echoed to the hoarse ringing of other saws; somewhere, very far away, a nightingale was trying out its voice, and at longer intervals a blackbird whistled as if blowing dust out of a flute. Even the engine steam rose into the sky warbling like milk boiling up on a nursery alchohol stove.

I think a little philosophy should be added to life and art by way of seasoning, but to make it one's speciality seems to me as strange as eating nothing but horseradish.

There is nothing to fear. There is no such thing as death. Death has nothing to do with us. But you said something about being talented--- that it makes one different. Now, that does have something to do with us. And talent in the highest and broadest sense means talent for life.

O fim da arte é doar somente. (...) Apagar-se no anonimato, Ocultando nossa passagem Pela vida, como à paisagem Oculta a nuvem com recato.

Beyond, pines hold sermons.

It's alleged that our scourge of God and punishment from heaven, Commissar Strelnikov, is Antipov come back to life. A legend, of course. And it's not like him.

The main trouble, the root of the future evil, was loss of faith in the value of one's own opinion. People imagined that the time when they followed the urgings of their moral sense was gone, that now they had to sing to the general tune and live by foreign notions imposed on everyone.

Despite the absence of fetters, chains, and guards, the doctor was forced to submit to his unfreedom, which looked imaginary.

She had once been the belle of her circle of small tradesmen and salesmen, but now her little pig eyes with their swollen lids could scarcely open.

For as long as he could remember he had never ceased to wonder why, having arms and legs like everyone else, and a language and a way of life common to all, one could be different from the others, liked only by few and, moreover, loved by no one.

Aren't we sensitive! We're something special. We're cultured. It's too much for us.

No duermas artista, no duermas, no te entregues al sueño.

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.

I think that collectivization was an erroneous and unsuccessful measure and it was impossible to admit the error. To conceal the failure people had to be cured, by every means of terrorism, of the habit of thinking and judging for themselves, and forced to see what didn't exist, to assert the very opposite of what their eyes told them.

And at this point he made his fatal, terrible mistake. He mistook the spirit of the times, the social, universal evil, for a private and domestic one. He listened to our cliches, to our unnatural official tone, and he thought it was because he was second-rate, a nonentity, that we talked like this. I suppose you find it incredible that such trivial things could matter so much in our married life. You can't imagine how important this was, what foolish things this childish nonsense made him do.

In one corner the piano tuner scattered arpeggios live handfuls of beads.

Intotdeauna omul neliber îÅŸi idealizeaz? nelibertatea.

The tsar was pitiable on that gray and warm mountain morning, and it was eerie to think that such timorous reserve and shyness could be the essence of an oppressor, that this weakness could punish and pardon, bind and loose.

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.

And the strong are dominated by the weak and the ignoble.

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

Don't let my soul be riddled / by deceit: kill it or, / like fog, it will seep through / a heap of white chaff.

It has already been so several times in history. What was conceived as ideal and lofty became coarse and material. So Greece turned into Rome, so the Russian enlightenment turned into the Russian revolution.