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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

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I Don't Like Purely

Boris Pasternak

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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

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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.

At The Moment Of Childbirth, Every Woman Has The Same Aura Of Isolation, As Though She Were Abandoned, Alone.

Immensely Grateful, Touched, Proud, Astonished, Abashed.

But The Division In Him Was A Sorrow And A Torment, And He Became Accustomed To It Only As One Gets Used To An Unhealed And Frequently Reopened Wound.

I Think That If The Beast Who Sleeps In Man Could Be Held Down By Threats Of Any Kind, Whether Of Jail Or Retribution, Then The Highest Emblem Of Humanity Would Be The Lion Tamer, Not The Prophet Who Sacrificed Himself.... What For Centuries Raised Man Above The Beast Is Not The Cudgel But The Irresistible Power Of Unarmed Truth.

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... The Unarmed Power Of Naked Truth.

To Be A Woman Is A Great Adventure; To Drive Men Mad Is A Heroic Thing.

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.

I Come Here To Speak Poetry. It Will Always Be In The Grass. It Will Also Be Necessary To Bend Down To Hear It. It Will Always Be Too Simple To Be Discussed In Assemblies.

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.

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.

Man Is Born To Live, Not To Prepare For Life.

They Don't Ask Much Of You. They Only Want You To Hate The Things You Love And To Love The Things You Despise.

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.

As For The Men In Power, They Are So Anxious To Establish The Myth Of Infallibility That They Do Their Utmost To Ignore Truth.

I Don't Like People Who Have Never Fallen Or Stumbled. Their Virtue Is Lifeless And It Isn't Of Much Value. Life Hasn't Revealed Its Beauty To Them.

I Love You Wildly, Insanely, Infinitely.

As In An Explosion, I Would Erupt With All The Wonderful Things I Saw And Understood In This World.

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.

He Comes As A Guest To The Feast Of Existence, And Knows That What Matters Is Not How Much He Inherits But How He Behaves At The Feast, And What People Remember And Love Him For.

Only The Solitary Seek The Truth, And They Break With All Those Who Don't Love It Sufficiently

No Deep And Strong Feeling, Such As We May Come Across Here And There In The World, Is Unmixed With Compassion. The More We Love, The More The Object Of Our Love Seems To Us To Be A Victim.

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We're All Time's Captives, Hostages To Eternity.

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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

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The Last Moments Slipped By, One By One, Irretrievable.

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What For Centuries Raised Man Above The Beast Is Not The Cudgel But The Irresistible Power Of Unarmed Truth.

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And Why Is It, Thought Lara, That My Fate Is To See Everything And Take It All So Much To Heart?

What Is History? Its Beginning Is That Of The Centuries Of Systematic Work Devoted To The Solution Of The Enigma Of Death, So That Death Itself May Eventually Be Overcome. That Is Why People Write Symphonies, And Why They Discover Mathematical Infinity And Electromagnetic Waves.

Art Is Interested In Life At The Moment When The Ray Of Power Is Passing Through It.

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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.

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It Was Not Until After The Coming Of Christ That Time And Humans Could Breathe Freely. It Was Not Until After Him That People Began To Live Toward The Future. Humans Do Not Die In A Ditch Like A Dog-but At Home In History, While The Work Toward The Conquest Of Death Is In Full Swing; They Die Sharing In This Work.

Poetry Is A Rich, Full-bodied Whistle, Cracked Ice Crunching In Pails, The Night That Numbs The Leaf, The Duel Of Two Nightingales, The Sweet Pea That Has Run Wild, Creation's Tears In Shoulder Blades.

You And I Are Like The First Two People On Earth Who At The Beginning Of The World Had Nothing To Cover Themselves With - At The End Of It, You And I Are Just As Stripped And Homeless. And You And I Are The Last Remembrance Of All That Immeasurable Greatness Which Has Been Created In All The Thousands Of Years Between Their Time And Ours, And It Is In Memory Of All That Vanished Splendour That We Live And Love And Weep And Cling To One Another.

What Is Laid Down, Ordered, Factual Is Never Enough To Embrace The Whole Truth: Life Always Spills Over The Rim Of Every Cup.

Surprise Is The Greatest Gift Which Life Can Grant Us.

You Are Eternity's Hostage A Captive Of Mine.

Good-bye... Why Am I Hemorrhaging ?

I Am Caught Like A Beast At Bay. Somewhere Are People, Freedom, Light, But All I Hear Is The Baying Of The Pack, There Is No Way Out For Me.

Literature Is The Art Of Discovering Something Extraordinary About Ordinary People, And Saying With Ordinary Words Something Extraordinary.

Art Has Two Constant, Two Unending Concerns: It Always Meditates On Death And Thus Always Creates Life. All Great, Genuine Art Resembles And Continues The Revelation Of St John.

An Unshared Happiness Is Not Happiness.

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.

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