Boris Pasternak Quotes

“It was against the rules to remain indifferent to it.”

“Lara was not religious. She did not believe in rites. But sometimes, in order to endure life, she needed it to be accompanied by some inner music.”

“It’s not for nothing that you stand at the end of my life ... just as ... at its beginning.”

“The rulers of your minds indulge in proverbs, but they’ve forgotten the main one, that love cannot be forced, and they have a deeply rooted habit of liberating people and making them happy, especially those who haven’t asked for it.”

“I never turn back halfway, never abandon what I’ve started.”

“The soul of these books was a new understanding of Christianity, their direct consequence a new understanding of art.”

“The unfree man always idolizes his slavery.”

“Every herd is a refuge for giftlessness . . . Only the solitary seek the truth, and they break with those who don’t love it sufficiently.”

“The point is precisely this, that for centuries man has been raised above the animals and borne aloft not by the rod, but by music: the irresistibility of the unarmed truth, the attraction of its example.”

“They were all there, all side by side, and some did not recognize each other, while others had never known each other.”

“If you love me and want to keep me from perishing, don’t put it off, let’s get married quickly.”

“It seems to me that socialism is a sea into which all these personal, separate revolutions should flow, the sea of life, the sea of originality.”

“I used to be in a very revolutionary mood, but now I think that we’ll gain nothing by violence.”

“It’s impossible, without its affecting your health, to show yourself day after day contrary to what you feel.”

“Just now I was looking out the window of the train and thinking. What can be higher than peace in the family and work? The rest isn’t in our power.”

“In defense of her wounded pride he would have torn the offender to pieces with his own hands. And here that offender was he himself.”

″[That] was why Yura was so shaken by his mother’s death, because he had been lost in that forest with her and was suddenly left alone in it, without her.”

“The roof over the whole of Russia has been torn off, and we and all the people find ourselves under the open sky.”

“Sacrificing her future in favor of Pasha’s, Lara held the candle as low as possible ... it always came out that her candle was higher than his.”

“All that was metaphorical has become literal, and the children are children, and the terrors are terrifying.”