Quotes from Boris Pasternak

They did not know that the misfortune of having average taste is a great deal worse than the misfortune of having no taste at all.

I have never understood those dreams of a completely original form of expression. The most extraordinary discoveries are made when the artist is overwhelmed by what he has to say. Then he uses the old language in his urgency and the old language is translated from within.

Poetry searches for music amidst the tumult of the dictionary.

Or again, take your red banner. You think it's a flag, isn't that what you think? Well, it isn't a flag. It's the purple kerchief of the death woman, she uses it for luring. And why for luring? She waves it and she nods and winks and lures young men to come and be killed, then she sends famine and plague. That's what it is. And you went and believed her. You thought it was a flag. You thought it was: Come to me, all ye poor and proletarians of the world.

The more we love, the more the object of our love seems to us to be a victim. In the case of some men, compassion for a woman exceeds all measure and transports her to an unreal, entirely imaginary world.

The poet gives his whole life such a voluntarily steep incline that it is impossible for it to exist in the vertical line of biography where we expect to meet it. It is not to be found under his own name and must be sought under those of others, in the biographical columns of his followers. The more self-contained the individuality from which the life derives, the more collective, without any figurative speaking, is its story.

It seemed as if the valley were not always girded by woods, growing on the surrounding hills and facing away from the horizon, but the trees had only taken up their places now, rising out of the ground to offer their condolences. He almost waved away the tangible beauty of the hour like a crowd of persistent friends, almost said to the lingering afterglow, 'thank you, thank you, I'll be all right.'

Could it be that for a moment of too-broad sympathy he had enslaved himself forever?

But all the time one and the same boundlessly identical life fills the universe and is renewed every hour in countless combinations and transformations. Here you have fears about whether you will resurrect, yet you already resurrected when you were born, and you didn't notice it.

the cow crossly shook her head and craned her neck, mooing plaintively, and beyond the black barns of Meliuzeievo the stars twinkled, and invisible threads of sympathy stretched between them and the cow as if there were cattle sheds in other worlds where she was pitied. Everything

The forest does not change its place, we cannot lie in wait for it and catch it in the act of change. Whenever we look at it, it seems to be motionless. And such also is the immobility to our eyes of the eternally growing, ceaselessly changing history, the life of society moving invisibly in its incessant transformations.

Only the superfluous is dirty.

Você não deve se entregar a tormentos e tristezas existenciais! Não é mais um menino, deve compreender o que lhe acontecerá se essa moça, filha do seu falecido amigo, essa criança, em vez de simples passatempo, vier a se tornar o objeto da sua loucura. Caia em si! Seja fiel a si mesmo, não traia seus hábitos. Senão, tudo voará pelos ares", pensava.

For life, too, is only an instant, Only the dissolving of ourselves In the selves of all others As if bestowing a gift –

The trains either don't run at all or come so full that it is impossible to get on them.

I should say the summit of contemporary university knowledge in two fields, mathematics and the humanities. That's no joke!

You and I are like Adam and Eve, the first human beings, who had nothing to cover themselves with when the world began, and we are now just as unclothed and homeless at its end.

a desgraça de um gosto mediano é ainda pior do que a desgraça de não ter gosto nenhum

Farewell, my great and dear one, farewell, my pride, farewell, my swift, deep river, how I loved your daylong splashing, how I loved to throw myself into your cold waves.

For a moment she rediscovered the purpose of her life. She was here on earth to grasp the meaning of its wild enchantment and to call each thing by its right name, or, if this were not within her power, to give birth out of love for life to successors who would do it in her place.

It occurred to her that when people were drunk they always tried to impersonate drunkards, and the drunker they were the more they overacted.

Were all times captives, hostages of Eternity

Am un chef incredibil, p?timaÅŸ de via?? ÅŸi a tr?i înseamn? a te avânta înainte, mai sus, c?tre perfecÅ£iunea pe care trebuie s-o atingi.

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