Boris Pasternak
Boris Pasternak
Boris Leonidovich Pasternakwas a Soviet and Russian poet, novelist, and literary translator. In his native Russian, Pasternak's first book of poems, My Sister, Life, is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language. Pasternak's translations of stage plays by Goethe, Schiller, Calderon and Shakespeare remain very popular with Russian audiences...
NationalityRussian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth10 February 1890
CountryRussian Federation
real war lying
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.
war learning two
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.
kings war men
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.
fear hot pairs
But what are pity, conscience, or fear To the brazen pair, compared With the living sorcery Of their hot embraces?
mean men would-be
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.
angel flames wings
A corner draft fluttered the flame And the white fever of temptation Upswept its angel wings that cast A cruciform shadow.
life years lasts
During the last years of Mayakovski's life, when all poetry had ceased to exist . . . literature had stopped.
life simple hypocrisy
I am alone; all drowns in the Pharisees' hypocrisy. To live your life is not as simple as to cross a field.
remember-you remembers-you despair
And remember: you must never, under any circumstances, despair. To hope and to act, these are our duties in misfortune.
spring fall writing
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.
atheist believe men
What you don't understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.
loyalty thinking stronger
How many things in the world deserve our loyalty? Very few indeed. I think one should be loyal to immortality, which is another word for life, a stronger word for it.
farewell party secret
Our evenings are farewells. Our parties are testaments. So that the secret stream of suffering. May warm the cold of life.
boredom impression doctor-zhivago
I have the impression that if he didn't complicate his life so needlessly, he would die of boredom.