Quote

The whole of life is symbolic because the whole of it has meaning.

Boris Pasternak

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Boris Pasternak
Age: 70 †
Born: 1890
Born: February 10
Died: 1960
Died: May 30
Novelist
Pianist
Playwright
Poet
Prosaist
Translator
Writer
Moscow
Russian SFSR
Holiwis
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak
Life
Symbolic
Meaning
Whole

More quotes by Boris Pasternak

Image
An unshared happiness is not happiness.
Boris Pasternak
Image
I don't like purely philosophical works. I think a little philosophy should be added to life and art by way of seasoning, but to make it one's specialty seems to me as strange as eating nothing but horseradish. - Lara, from Doctor Zhivago
Boris Pasternak
Image
Love is not weakness. It is strong. Only the sacrament of marriage can contain it.
Boris Pasternak
Image
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 Pasternak
Image
Farewell, my great one, my own, farewell, my pride, farewell, my swift, deep, dear river, how I loved your daylong splashing, how I loved to plunge into your cold waves.
Boris Pasternak
Image
They loved each other, not driven by necessity, by the blaze of passion often falsely ascribed to love. They loved each other because everything around them willed it, the trees and the clouds and the sky over their heads and the earth under their feet.
Boris Pasternak
Image
Oh, what a love it was, utterly free, unique, like nothing else on earth! Their thoughts were like other people's songs.
Boris Pasternak
Image
He realised, more vividly than ever before, that art had two constant, two unending preoccupations: it is always meditating upon death and it is always thereby creating life.
Boris Pasternak
Image
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
Image
To be a woman is a great adventure To drive men mad is a heroic thing.
Boris Pasternak
Image
We're all time's captives, hostages to eternity.
Boris Pasternak
Image
Man is born to live, not to prepare for life.
Boris Pasternak
Image
Yet the order of the acts is planned And the end of the way inescapable. I am alone all drowns in the Pharisees' hypocrisy.
Boris Pasternak
Image
... the unarmed power of naked truth.
Boris Pasternak
Image
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.
Boris Pasternak
Image
And so it turned out that only a life similar to the life of those around us, merging with it without a ripple, is genuine life, and that an unshared happiness is not happiness.
Boris Pasternak
Image
That's metaphysics, my dear fellow. It's forbidden me by my doctor, my stomach won't take it.
Boris Pasternak
Image
What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup.
Boris Pasternak
Image
It snowed and snowed, the whole world over, Snow swept the world from end to end. A candle burned on the table A candle burned.
Boris Pasternak
Image
Only the solitary seek the truth, and they break with all those who don't love it sufficiently
Boris Pasternak