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 in an explosion, I would erupt with all the wonderful things I saw and understood in this world. - Boris Pasternak
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
Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary. - Boris Pasternak
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
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
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
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
That's metaphysics, my dear fellow. It's forbidden me by my doctor, my stomach won't take it. - Boris Pasternak
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
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
At the moment of childbirth, every woman has the same aura of isolation, as though she were abandoned, alone. - 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
I used to be very revolutionary, but now I think that nothing can be gained by brute force. People must be drawn to good by goodness. - Boris Pasternak
In life it is more necessary to lose than to gain. A seed will only germinate if it dies. - Boris Pasternak
The most extraordinary discoveries are made when the artist is overwhelmed by what he has to say. - Boris Pasternak
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
When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beating of your heart, and it is very easy to miss it. - Boris Pasternak
A conscious attempt to fall asleep is sure to produce insomnia, to try to be conscious of one's own digestion is a sure way to upset the stomach. Consciousness is a poison when we apply it to ourselves. Consciousness is a light directed outward. It's like the headlights on a locomotive—turn them inward and you'd have a crash. - Boris Pasternak
About dreams. It is usually taken for granted that you dream of something that has made a particularly strong impression on you during the day, but it seems to me it´s just the contrary. Often it´s something you paid no attention to at the time -- a vague thought that you didn´t bother to think out to the end, words spoken without feeling and which passed unnoticed -- these are the things that return at night, clothed in flesh and blood, and they become the subjects of dreams, as if to make up for having been ignored during waking hours. - Boris Pasternak
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
I have the impression that if he didn't complicate his life so needlessly, he would die of boredom. - Boris Pasternak