As for the men in power, they are so anxious to establish the myth of infallibility that they do their utmost to ignore truth. Boris Pasternak More Quotes by Boris Pasternak More Quotes From Boris Pasternak No single man makes history. History cannot be seen just as one cannot see grass growing. Boris Pasternak single-man growing men Our evenings are farewells. Our parties are testaments. So that the secret stream of suffering. May warm the cold of life. Boris Pasternak party farewell secret As before the collapse, the setting sun brushed the tiles, brought out the warm brown glow on the wallpaper, and hung the shadow of the birch on the wall as if it were a woman's scarf. Boris Pasternak scarves wall shadow I used to be very revolutionary, but now I think that nothing can be gained by brute force. People must be drawn to good by goodness. Boris Pasternak revolutionary people thinking No bad man can be a good poet. Boris Pasternak bad-man poet men The writer is the Faust of modern society, the only surviving individualist in a mass age. To his orthodox contemporaries he seems a semi-madman. Boris Pasternak faust age writing The whole wide world is a cathedral; I stand inside, the air is calm, And from afar at times there reaches My ear the echo of a psalm. Boris Pasternak echoes air ears I hate everything you say, but not enough to kill you for it. Boris Pasternak i-hate hate enough I have been writing in spurts, bit by bit. It is incredibly difficult. Everything is corroded, broken, dismantled; everything is covered with hardened layers of accumulated insensitivity, deafness, entrenched routine. It is disgusting. Boris Pasternak routine broken writing Oh, what a love it was, utterly free, unique, like nothing else on earth! Their thoughts were like other people's songs. Boris Pasternak unique song people ... the unarmed power of naked truth. Boris Pasternak unarmed naked truth 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. Boris Pasternak dust lonely home But what are pity, conscience, or fear To the brazen pair, compared With the living sorcery Of their hot embraces? Boris Pasternak sorcery fear hot I have the impression that if he didn't complicate his life so needlessly, he would die of boredom. Boris Pasternak doctor-zhivago boredom impression During the last years of Mayakovski's life, when all poetry had ceased to exist . . . literature had stopped. Boris Pasternak literature life years I am alone; all drowns in the Pharisees' hypocrisy. To live your life is not as simple as to cross a field. Boris Pasternak hypocrisy simple life And when the war broke out, its real horrors, its real dangers, its menace of real death were a blessing compared with the inhuman reign of the lie, and they brought relief because they broke the spell of the dead letter. Boris Pasternak real war death In this era of world wars, in this atomic age, values have changed. We have learned that we are guests of existence, travelers between two stations. We must discover security within ourselves. Boris Pasternak learning change war Gregariousness is always the refuge of mediocrities, whether they swear by Soloviev or Kant or Marx. Only individuals seek the truth, and they shun those whose sole concern is not the truth. Boris Pasternak sole mediocrity individual 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. Boris Pasternak doctors real thinking
