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Boris Pasternak

Boris Pasternak Quotes

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Famous Boris Pasternak Quotes

“You and I are like the first two people on earth who at the beginning of the world had nothing to cover themselves with - at the end of it, you and I are just as stripped and homeless. And you and I are the last remembrance of all that immeasurable greatness which has been created in all the thousands of years between their time and ours, and it is in memory of all that vanished splendour that we live and love and weep and cling to one another.”

PeopleWorldYearsFirstsHas BeensTwoEndsEarthLastsMemoriesGreatnessAnd LoveHomelessRemembranceSplendourLive And Love
Author:Boris Pasternak
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“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. Our nervous system isn’t just a fiction, it’s part of our physical body, and our soul exists in space and is inside us, like teeth in our mouth. It can’t be forever violated with impunity.”

IfsLifeFeelsSoulBodySpaceFictionForeverMouthsOppositesMajorityConstantBoundsTeethNervousAffectedMisfortunesDislikeRejoiceSystematicNervous SystemImpunityPhysical BodyDuplicity
Author:Boris Pasternak
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“February. Get ink, shed tears. Write of it, sob your heart out, sing, While torrential slush that roars Burns in the blackness of the spring. Go hire a buggy. For six grivnas, Race through the noice of bells and wheels To where the ink and all you grieving Are muffled when the rainshower falls. To where, like pears burnt black as charcoal, A myriad rooks, plucked from the trees, Fall down into the puddles, hurl Dry sadness deep into the eyes. Below, the wet black earth shows through, With sudden cries the wind is pitted, The more haphazard, the more true The poetry that sobs its heart out.”

WritingHeartShowsEyeEarthFallBlackRaceTreeSadnessCryTearsWindSixSpringGrievingDryWheelsBellsWetShedInkFalling DownBlacknessFebruaryPuddlesPearsCharcoalHaphazardSlush
Author:Boris Pasternak
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“No single man makes history. History cannot be seen, just as one cannot see grass growing. Wars and revolutions, kings and Robespierres, are history's organic agents, its yeast. But revolutions are made by fanatical men of action with one-track mind, geniuses in their ability to confine themselves to a limited field. They overturn the old order in a few hours or days, the whole upheaval takes a few weeks or at most years, but the fanatical spirit that inspired the upheavals is worshiped for decades thereafter, for centuries.”

MenYearsMindMadeWarWholeActionSpiritOrderHoursAbilityGrowingWeekCenturyFieldsRevolutionGeniusKingsInspiredTrackDecadesAgentsGrassUpheavalSingle ManYeastGrass Growing
Author:Boris Pasternak
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“Lara walked along the tracks following a path worn by pilgrims and then turned into the fields. Here she stopped and, closing her eyes, took a deep breath of the flower-scented air of the broad expanse around her. It was dearer to her than her kin, better than a lover, wiser than a book. For a moment she rediscovered the purpose of her life. She was here on earth to grasp the meaning of its wild enchantment and to call each thing by its right name, or, if this were not within her power, to give birth out of love for life to successors who would do it in her place.”

IfsGivingBookMomentsEyeEarthPurposeNamesPathAirFieldsFlowerBirthLoversBreathsTrackFollowingLove LifeBroadsWornWiserHer EyesClosingPilgrimDeep BreathEnchantmentSuccessorsExpanse
Author:Boris Pasternak
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“A conscious attempt to fall asleep is sure to produce insomnia, to try to be conscious of one's own digestion is a sure way to upset the stomach. Consciousness is a poison when we apply it to ourselves. Consciousness is a light directed outward. it's like the headlights on a locomotive—turn them inward and you'd have a crash.”

WayTryingLightTurnsFallConsciousnessProduceConsciousUpsetPoisonStomachCrashInwardInsomniaDigestionHeadlightsLocomotivesDoctor Zhivago
Author:Boris Pasternak
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“Reshaping life! People who can say that have never understood a thing about life—they have never felt its breath, its heartbeat—however much they have seen or done. They look on it as a lump of raw material that needs to be processed by them, to be ennobled by their touch. But life is never a material, a substance to be molded. If you want to know, life is the principle of self-renewal, it is constantly renewing and remaking and changing and transfiguring itself, it is infinitely beyond your or my obtuse theories about it.”

PeopleIfsKnowsWantNeedsLooksSelfDoneLife IsFeltPrinciplesMaterialsTheoryUnderstoodBreathsSubstanceRenewalHeartbeatLumpsRaw MaterialsRenewal Of Life
Author:Boris Pasternak
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“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 -- a vague thought that you didn´t bother to think out to the end, words spoken without feeling and which passed unnoticed -- these are the things that return at night, clothed in flesh and blood, and they become the subjects of dreams, as if to make up for having been ignored during waking hours.”

IfsThinkingLifeMadeEndsFeelingsDreamSeemsNightStrongHoursAttentionTakenBloodSubjectsReturnPaidContraryFleshImpressionGrantedBotherWakingIgnoredVagueUnnoticedTaken For GrantedFlesh And Blood
Author:Boris Pasternak
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“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 to be. He has risen above himself, he has a grain of immortality.”

IfsMenHumansMeanDifferentEndsShowsWould BeHuman BeingsTypeOughtGood ThingsImmortalityCategoriesGrainRisenDoctor ZhivagoHe Has Risen
Author:Boris Pasternak
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“And now listen carefully. You in others-this is your soul. This is what you are. This is what your consciousness has breathed and lived on and enjoyed throughout your life-your soul, your immortality, your life in others. And what now? You have always been in others and you will remain in others. And what does it matter to you if later on that is called your memory? This will be you-the you that enters the future and becomes a part of it.”

IfsDoeSoulMatterMemoriesConsciousnessEnjoyedYour SoulImmortalityBe YouDoes It MatterDoctor Zhivago
Author:Boris Pasternak
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“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!”

HumansLongSometimesWishUnderstandingSoundSleepEmotionLaborPhrasesMeaninglessRefugeSublimeEloquenceDullnessSpeechlessInarticulateDoctor ZhivagoSound Sleep
Book:Roger Martin du Gard: Gabriela Mistral ; Boris Pasternak
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“Don't be upset. Don't listen to me. I only meant that I am jealous of a dark, unconscious element, something irrational, unfathomable. I am jealous of your toilet articles, of the drops of sweat on your skin, of the germs in the air you breathe which could get into your blood and poison you. And I am jealous of Komarovsky, as if he were an infectious disease. Someday he will take you away, just as certainly as death will someday separate us. I know this must seem obscure and confused, but I can't say it more clearly. I love you madly, irrationally, infinitely.”

IfsKnowsI CanSeemsDarkAirBloodLove YouDiseaseElementsSkinsBreatheUpsetConfusedPoisonUnconsciousSomedayJealousSweatArticlesIrrationalObscureToiletsGermsListen To MeUnfathomableInfectious DiseasesI Am Jealous
Author:Boris Pasternak
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“Everything established, settled, everything to do with home and order and the common ground, has crumbled into dust and has been swept away in the general upheaval and reorganization of the whole of society. The whole human way of life has been destroyed and ruined. All that's left is the bare, shivering human soul, stripped to the last shred, the naked force of the human psyche for which nothing has changed because it was always cold and shivering and reaching out to its nearest neighbor, as cold and lonely as itself.”

WayHumansHas BeensSoulWholeHomeLastsOrderLeftForceCommonChangedColdLonelyNeighborNakedDestroyedDustReachingReach OutRuinedHuman SoulCommon GroundUpheavalSwept AwayHuman PsycheReorganization
Author:Boris Pasternak
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“It's only in bad novels that people are divided into two camps and have nothing to do with each other. In real life everything gets mixed up! Don't you think you'd have to be a hopeless nonentity to play only one role all your life, to have only one place in society, always to stand for the same thing?--Ah, there you are!" - Larissa Fyodorovna in Doctor Zhivago.”

PeopleThinkingTwoRealPlayRolesNovelDoctorsReal LifeHopelessDividedCampsDoctor ZhivagoNonentity
Author:Boris Pasternak
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