All mothers are mothers of great people, and it is not their fault that life later disappoints them.
--Boris Pasternak
And remember: you must never, under any circumstances, despair. To hope and to act, these are our duties in misfortune.
--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
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
How wonderful to be alive... But why does it always hurt?
--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 hate everything you say, but not enough to kill you for it.
--Boris Pasternak
I think a little philosophy should be added to life and art by way of seasoning, but to make it one's specialty seems to me as strange as eating nothing but horseradish.
--Boris Pasternak
In every generation there has to be some fool who will speak the truth as he sees it.
--Boris Pasternak
In life, it is more necessary to lose than to gain. A seed will only germinate if it dies.
--Boris Pasternak
It is not the object described that matters, but the light that falls on it.
--Boris Pasternak
Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.
--Boris Pasternak
Love is not weakness. It is strong. Only the sacrament of marriage can contain it.
--Boris Pasternak
Man is born to live and not to prepare to live.
--Boris Pasternak
No bad man can be a good poet.
--Boris Pasternak
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
No single man makes history. History cannot be seen, just as one cannot see grass growing.
--Boris Pasternak
Only the solitary seek the truth, and they break with all those who don't love it sufficiently.
--Boris Pasternak
Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.
--Boris Pasternak
The great majority of us are required to live a constant, systematic duplicity. Your health is bound to be affected by it if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, you grovel before what you dislike and rejoice at what bring brings you nothing but misfortune.
--Boris Pasternak
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
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
To be a woman is a great adventure; To drive men mad is a heroic thing.
--Boris Pasternak
What for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth.
--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
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
You are eternity's hostage. A captive of time.
--Boris Pasternak
Found 27 occurence(s) in 52,537 quotation(s).