Boris Pasternak

“And why is it, thought Lara, that my fate is to see everything and take it all so much to heart?”

“Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.”

“That's metaphysics, my dear fellow. It's forbidden me by my doctor, my stomach won't take it.”

“Every herd is a refuge for giftlessness, whether it's a faith in Soloviev, or Kant, or Marx. Only the solitary seek the truth, and they break with all those who don't love it sufficiently.”

“I am weary of this notion of faithfulness to a point of view at all cost. Life around us is ever changing, and I believe that one should try to change one’s slant accordingly—at least once every ten years. The great heroic devotion to one point of view is very alien to me—it’s a lack of humility. Mayakovsky killed himself because his pride would not be reconciled with something new happening within himself—or around him.”

“If it's so painful to love and absorb electricity, how much more painful it is to be a woman, to be the electricity, to inspire love.”

“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.”

“What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup.”

“The wind swept the snow aside, ever faster and thicker, as if it were trying to catch up with something, and Yurii Andreievich stared ahead of him out of the window, as if he were not looking at the snow but were still reading Tonia’s letter and as if what flickered past him were not small dry snow crystals but the spaces between the small black letters, white, white, endless, endless.”

“Even so, one step from my grave, I believe that cruelty, spite, The powers of darkness will in time, Be crushed by the spirit of light.”

“רובנו נאלצים לחיות בתחושת כפילות מתמדת. הבריאות מושפעת מכך שאתם אומרים את ההיפך ממה שאתם מרגישים ומתרפסים בפני מי שאינכם אוהבים.”

“אהבה לזולת, הסוג העליון הזה של אנרגיית החיים, הממלאת את לבו של האדם והדורשת לפרוץ החוצה.”

“במשבי רוח עזים היטלטלו שיחי השיטה העירומים כאחוזי תזזית, ונשכבו על הדרך.”

“הוא הרים את ראשו והקיף במבט שומם ממקומו המוגבהּ את מגרשי הסתיו הריקים ואת כיפות המנזר.”

“בנסיבות של חוסר סדר נצחי בחיי היומיום כלל לא הופתע שאביו לא נמצא איתו.”

“אתה אדם מאושר! איזה נוף יש לך מכאן – העין לא תשבע מיופיו!”

“אנחנו באותו אוויר, את כאן, נוכחותך כמו עיר.”

“כשיום אורו שופך, לקרוא בו שוב, מהתחלה, הכול.”

“באותה בדידות שוב מתמלא הלב כולו והעולם.”

“הוא לא יגיס בה דעת, אלא עמה ינהג מידת חרות.”