They don't ask much of you. They only want you to hate the things you love and to love the things you despise.
Boris PasternakRead
And why is it, thought Lara, that my fate is to see everything and take it all so much to heart?
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses a deep emotional sensitivity towards one's experiences and fate.
Boris Pasternak's quote reflects on the burden of being highly perceptive and empathetic toward life's events. It emphasizes the struggle of understanding and internalizing every experience deeply, suggesting a sense of both awareness and emotional weight that accompanies such sensitivity.
Themes
FateSensitivityEmotionsPerceptionLife Experiences
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech on emotional intelligence, one might say this quote to illustrate the impact of deep empathy.
More from Boris Pasternak
All quotes →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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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.
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Our evenings are farewells. Our parties are testaments. So that the secret stream of suffering. May warm the cold of life.
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The most extraordinary discoveries are made when the artist is overwhelmed by what he has to say.
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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 PasternakRead
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