Quotes by Boris Pasternak

About Boris Pasternak:

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language. Pasternak's translations of stage plays by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, and William Shakespeare remain very popular with Russian audiences.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

He realised, more vividly than ever before, that art had two constant, two unending preoccupations: it is always meditating upon death and it is always thereby creating life.

Boris Pasternak

Art always serves beauty, and beauty is the joy of possessing form, and form is the key to organic life since no living thing can exist without it.

Boris Pasternak

It was partly the war, the revolution did the rest. The war was an artificial break in life-- as if life could be put off for a time-- what nonsense! The revolution broke out willy-nilly like a sigh suppressed too long. Everyone was revived, reborn, ...

Boris Pasternak

Every herd is a refuge for giftlessness, whether it's a faith in Soloviev, or Kant, or Marx. Only the solitary seek the truth, and they break with all those who don't love it sufficiently.

Boris Pasternak

The rulers of your minds indulge in proverbs, but they've forgotten the main one, that love cannot be forced, and they have a deeply rooted habit of liberating people and making them happy, especially those who haven't asked for it. You probably fanc...

Boris Pasternak

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.

Boris Pasternak

The saddest thing of all was that their party represented a deviation from the conditions of the time. It was impossible to imagine that in the houses across the lane people were eating and drinking in the same way at such an hour. Beyond the window ...

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 -- ...

Boris Pasternak

Salvation lies not in the faithfulness to forms, but in the liberation from them.

Boris Pasternak

There shall be no more death, Because we have already seen all that, Its old and we are tired of it, And now we need something new, And this new thing is Eternal Life

Boris Pasternak

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...

Boris Pasternak

Ecco che cos'era la vita, che cos'era l'esperienza, che cosa inseguivano coloro che andavano in cerca di avventure, ecco a che cosa mirava l'arte: ritornare a casa propria, ai propri affetti, riprendere la vita

Boris Pasternak

It´s a good thing when a man is different from your image of him. Is shows he isn´t a type. If he were, it would be the end of him as a man. But if you can´t place him in a category, it means that at least a part of him is what a human being ought...

Boris Pasternak

It's good when a man deceives your expectations, when he doesn't correspond to the preconceived notion of him. To belong to a type is the end of a man, his condemnation. If he doesn't fall into any category, if he's not representative, half of what's...

Boris Pasternak

You and I, it's as though we have been taught to kiss in heaven and sent down to earth together, to see if we know what we were taught.

Boris Pasternak

The last moments slipped by, one by one, irretrievable.

Boris Pasternak

The Mother of God is asked to 'pray zealously to her Son and her God,' and the words of the psalm are put into her mouth:'My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior. for He hath regarded the low estate of his handmaid...

Boris Pasternak

All mothers are mothers of great people, and it is not their fault that life later disappoints them.

Boris Pasternak

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

Boris Pasternak

They loved each other, not driven by necessity, by the “blaze of passion” often falsely ascribed to love. They loved each other because everything around them willed it, the trees and the clouds and the sky over their heads and the earth under th...

Boris Pasternak

They loved each other, not driven by necessity, by the "blaze of passion" often falsely ascribed to love. They loved each other because everything around them willed it, the trees and the clouds and the sky over their heads and the earth under their ...

Boris Pasternak

Author Bio

  • NameBoris Pasternak
  • DescriptionRussian writer
  • AliasesBoris Leonidovich Pasternak
  • BornFebruary 10, 1890
  • DiedMay 30, 1960
  • CountryRussian Empire; Soviet Union
  • ProfessionWriter; Poet; Translator; Novelist
  • WorksDoctor Zhivago
  • AwardsNobel Prize In Literature