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The Great Majority Of Us Are Required To Live A Constant, Systematic Duplicity. Your Health Is Bound To Be Affected By It If, Day After Day, You Say The Opposite Of What You Feel, You Grovel Before What You Dislike And Rejoice At What Bring Brings You Nothing But Misfortune. Our Nervous System Isn’t Just A Fiction, It’s Part Of Our Physical Body, And Our Soul Exists In Space And Is Inside Us, Like Teeth In Our Mouth. It Can’t Be Forever Violated With Impunity.

-Boris Pasternak

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The Great Majority Of

Boris Pasternak

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The Great Majority Of Us Are Required To Live A Constant, Systematic Duplicity. Your Health Is Bound To Be Affected By It If, Day After Day, You Say The Opposite Of What You Feel, You Grovel Before What You Dislike And Rejoice At What Bring Brings You Nothing But Misfortune. Our Nervous System Isn’t Just A Fiction, It’s Part Of Our Physical Body, And Our Soul Exists In Space And Is Inside Us, Like Teeth In Our Mouth. It Can’t Be Forever Violated With Impunity.

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A Literary Creation Can Appeal To Us In All Sorts Of Ways-by Its Theme, Subject, Situations, Characters. But Above All It Appeals To Us By The Presence In It Of Art. It Is The Presence Of Art In Crime And Punishment That Moves Us Deeply Rather Than The Story Of Raskolnikov's Crime.

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.

No Single Man Makes History. History Cannot Be Seen Just As One Cannot See Grass Growing.

Yet The Order Of The Acts Is Planned And The End Of The Way Inescapable. I Am Alone; All Drowns In The Pharisees' Hypocrisy.

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.

Oh, What A Love It Was, Utterly Free, Unique, Like Nothing Else On Earth! Their Thoughts Were Like Other People's Songs.

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

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

Here They Are, All In One Place. Circle Back To Them When You Need Some Poetic Shine. It Is Not Revolutions And Upheavals That Clear The Road To Better Days, But Revelations, And Lavishness Of Someone's Soul Inspired, And Ablaze.

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!

But What Are Pity, Conscience, Or Fear To The Brazen Pair, Compared With The Living Sorcery Of Their Hot Embraces?

I Hate Everything You Say, But Not Enough To Kill You For It.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

... The Unarmed Power Of Naked Truth.

He Is Her Glory. Any Woman Could Say It. For Every One Of Them, God Is In Her Child. Mothers Of Great Men Must Have Been Familiar With This Feeling, But Then, All Women Are Mothers Of Great Men -- It Isn't Their Fault If Life Disappoints Them Later.

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.

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.

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

She Was Here On Earth To Make Sense Of Its Wild Enchantments.

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

Don't Be Upset. Don't Listen To Me. I Only Meant That I Am Jealous Of A Dark, Unconscious Element, Something Irrational, Unfathomable. I Am Jealous Of Your Toilet Articles, Of The Drops Of Sweat On Your Skin, Of The Germs In The Air You Breathe Which Could Get Into Your Blood And Poison You. And I Am Jealous Of Komarovsky, As If He Were An Infectious Disease. Someday He Will Take You Away, Just As Certainly As Death Will Someday Separate Us. I Know This Must Seem Obscure And Confused, But I Can't Say It More Clearly. I Love You Madly, Irrationally, Infinitely.

And Now Listen Carefully. You In Others-this Is Your Soul. This Is What You Are. This Is What Your Consciousness Has Breathed And Lived On And Enjoyed Throughout Your Life-your Soul, Your Immortality, Your Life In Others. And What Now? You Have Always Been In Others And You Will Remain In Others. And What Does It Matter To You If Later On That Is Called Your Memory? This Will Be You-the You That Enters The Future And Becomes A Part Of It.

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

We Must Discover Security Within Ourselves.

You And I, It's As Though We Have Been Taught To Kiss In Heaven And Sent Down To Earth Together, To See If We Know What We Were Taught.

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 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.

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An Unshared Happiness Is Not Happiness.

Mother Russia Is On The Move, She Can't Stand Still, She's Restless And Can't Find Rest, She's Talking And She Can't Stop.

You Fall Into My Arms. You Are The Good Gift Of Destruction's Path, When Life Sickens More Than Disease And Boldness Is The Root Of Beauty - Which Draws Us Together.

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It Is Not The Object Described That Matters, But The Light That Falls On It.

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Surprise Is The Greatest Gift Which Life Can Grant Us.

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Immensely Grateful, Touched, Proud, Astonished, Abashed.

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In Every Generation There Has To Be Some Fool Who Will Speak The Truth As He Sees It.

Love Is Not Weakness. It Is Strong. Only The Sacrament Of Marriage Can Contain It.

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Failure To Love Is Almost Like Murder.

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

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How Wonderful To Be Alive, He Thought. But Why Does It Always Hurt?

A Corner Draft Fluttered The Flame And The White Fever Of Temptation Upswept Its Angel Wings That Cast A Cruciform Shadow.

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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.

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If You Want To Know, Life Is The Principle Of Self-renewal, It Is Constantly Renewing And Remaking And Changing And Transfiguring Itself.

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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.

The Whole Of Life Is Symbolic Because The Whole Of It Has Meaning.

I Love You Wildly, Insanely, Infinitely.

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.

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