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Boris Pasternak
21 quotes
“Не спи, не спи, художник, Не предавайся сну. Ты – вечности заложник У времени в плену.”
Boris Pasternak (1890–1960) first seen 1957 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Poem "Night" (Ночь), from When the Weather Clears (Kogda razgulyaetsya, 1957) — as quoted in One Less Hope: Essays on Twentieth-century Russian Poets (2006) by Constantin V. Ponomareff, p. 130
“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 (1890–1960) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Soviet bureaucrats, in LIFE magazine (13 June 1960)
“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 (1890–1960) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: LIFE magazine (13 June 1960)
“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 (1890–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview in Writers at Work, Second Series (1963) edited by George Plimpton.
“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 (1890–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The New York Times (1 January 1978)
“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 (1890–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Bridges to Infinity : The Human Side of Mathematics (1983) by Michael Guillen
“Gregariousness is always the refuge of mediocrities, whether they swear by Solovyov or Kant or Marx. Only individuals seek the truth.”
Boris Pasternak (1890–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That's metaphysics, my dear fellow. It's forbidden me by my doctor, my stomach won't take it.”
Boris Pasternak (1890–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1890–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Snow, snow over the whole land across all boundaries. The candle burned on the table, the candle burned.”
Boris Pasternak (1890–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As translated by Richard McKane (1985)
“И вот оказалось, что только жизнь, похожая на жизнь окружающих и среди нее бесследно тонущая, есть жизнь настоящая, что счастье обособленное не есть счастье...”
Boris Pasternak (1890–1960) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Reporter, Volume 19, 1958
“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 (1890–1960) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "Boris Pasternak" in I.F. Stone's Weekly (3 November 1958), § "Words Which Apply to Us As Well As Russia"; later in The Best of I.F. Stone (2006), p. 43
“The main misfortune, the root of all evil to come, was loss of the confidence in the value of one's own opinion. People imagined that it was out of date of follow their own moral sense, that they must all sing in chorus, and live by other people's notions, notions that were crammed down everybody's throat.”
Boris Pasternak (1890–1960) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "Boris Pasternak" in I.F. Stone's Weekly (3 November 1958), § "Words Which Apply to Us As Well As Russia"; later in The Best of I.F. Stone (2006), p. 43
“Мое собственное сердце скрыло бы это от меня, потому что нелюбовь почти как убийство, и я никому не в силах была бы нанести этого удара.”
Boris Pasternak (1890–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I love you madly, irrationally, infinitely.”
Boris Pasternak (1890–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How wonderful to be alive," he thought. "But why does it always hurt?”
Boris Pasternak (1890–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1890–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1890–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Am I a gangster or a murderer? Of what crime do I stand Condemned? I made the whole world weep At the beauty of my land.”
Boris Pasternak (1890–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1890–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think that if the beast who sleeps in man could be held down by threats — any kind of threat, whether of jail or of retribution after death — then the highest emblem of humanity would be the lion tamer in the circus with his whip, not the prophet who sacrificed himself. But don’t you see, this is just the point — what has for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but an inward music: the irresistible power of unarmed truth, the powerful attraction of its example. It has always been assumed that the most important things in the Gospels are the ethical maxims and commandments. But for me the most important thing is that Christ speaks in parables taken from life, that He explains the truth in terms of everyday reality. The idea that underlies this is that communion between mortals is immortal, and that the whole of life is symbolic because it is meaningful.”
Boris Pasternak (1890–1960) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Book One, Ch. 2 : A Girl from a Different World, § 10, as translated by Max Hayward and Manya Harari (1958)