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
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that experiencing failure and struggle is essential for appreciating the beauty of life.
In this quote, Boris Pasternak expresses the idea that individuals who have never faced challenges or failures lack a deeper understanding of life's richness and complexities. He argues that true virtue is born from the struggles we face, which teach us resilience and allow us to see the beauty that comes from overcoming adversity.
Themes
FailureStruggleLifeVirtueBeauty
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a motivational speech about resilience.
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
Similar quotes
It's still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.
Maya AngelouRead
When I remember bygone days I think how evening follows morn So many I loved were not yet dead, So many I love were not yet born.
Ogden NashRead
One of the things I've learnt is not to depend on there being a woman in your life to make it work. I love my work, I love my children, I've got wonderful friends, you know, I have a nice life.
Salman RushdieRead
(Ravic speaking of a butterfly caught in the Louvre) In the morning it would search for flowers and life and the light honey of blossoms and would not find them and later it would fall asleep on millennial marble, weakened by then, until the grip of the delicate, tenacious feet loosened and it fell, a thin leaf of premature autumn.
Erich Maria RemarqueRead
Real sadness is such an all-encompassing intense thing that it takes you out of your humdrum existence. If you can still function, you want to show it while it's peaking. So when people tell you to cheer up, it's not always the best thing.
David ByrneRead
I get those fleeting, beautiful moments of inner peace and stillness - and then the other 23 hours and 45 minutes of the day, I'm a human trying to make it through in this world.
Ellen DegeneresRead