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 PasternakRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Art embodies beauty, which is essential for life and existence.
This quote by Boris Pasternak emphasizes the intrinsic relationship between art, beauty, and life. It suggests that art serves as a vessel for beauty, which in turn is fundamental to the very existence of life, as all living things are defined by their form. Without form, there can be no life, and thus, the appreciation of beauty through art is integral to the human experience.
Themes
ArtBeautyLifeFormExistence
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech on the importance of art in education.
More from Boris Pasternak
All quotes βEven 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 PasternakRead
He is her glory. Any woman could say it. For every one of them, God is in her child. Mothers of great men must have been familiar with this feeling, but then, all women are mothers of great men -- it isn't their fault if life disappoints them later.
Boris PasternakRead
Our evenings are farewells. Our parties are testaments. So that the secret stream of suffering. May warm the cold of life.
Boris PasternakRead
The most extraordinary discoveries are made when the artist is overwhelmed by what he has to say.
Boris PasternakRead
Oh, how one wishes sometimes to escape from the meaningless dullness of human eloquence, from all those sublime phrases, to take refuge in nature, apparently so inarticulate, or in the wordlessness of long, grinding labor, of sound sleep, of true music, or of a human understanding rendered speechless by emotion!
Boris PasternakRead
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Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.
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If you're writing a song, you have to write something that can be understood serially. When you're reading a poem that's written for the page, your eye can skip up and down. You can see the thing whole. But you're not going to see the thing whole in the song. You're going to hear it in series, and you can't skip back.
James FentonRead