Explore Quotes by Boris Pasternak

Even so, one step from my grave,_x000D__x000D_I believe that cruelty, spite,_x000D__x000D_The powers of darkness will in time_x000D__x000D_Be crushed by the spirit of light.

I am alone; all drowns in the Pharisees' hypocrisy. To live your life is not as simple as to cross a field.

During the last years of Mayakovski's life, when all poetry had ceased to exist . . . literature had stopped.

Art has two constant, two unending concerns: It always meditates on death and thus always creates life. All great, genuine art resembles and continues the Revelation of St John.

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.

What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup.

Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.

As for the men in power, they are so anxious to establish the myth of infallibility that they do their utmost to ignore truth.

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.

Immensely grateful, touched, proud, astonished, abashed.

Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.

A corner draft fluttered the flame And the white fever of temptation Upswept its angel wings that cast A cruciform shadow.

At the moment of childbirth, every woman has the same aura of isolation, as though she were abandoned, alone.

But what are pity, conscience, or fear To the brazen pair, compared With the living sorcery Of their hot embraces?

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.

I am caught like a beast at bay. Somewhere are people, freedom, light, But all I hear is the baying of the pack, There is no way out for me.

Failure to love is almost like murder.

What for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth.

It snowed and snowed, the whole world over, Snow swept the world from end to end. A candle burned on the table; A candle burned.

The whole of life is symbolic because the whole of it has meaning.

As far as modern writing is concerned, it is rarely rewarding to translate it, although it might be easy. Translation is very much like copying paintings.