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
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!
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses a desire to escape from the complexities and emptiness of human communication in favor of the simplicity and purity found in nature and deep emotional experiences.
Boris Pasternak's quote reflects a longing for a deeper connection to life beyond the often convoluted nature of human expression. It highlights the contrast between the overcomplicated language of civilization and the direct, unspoken truths found in nature, labor, music, and profound emotional experiences. The author yearns for a refuge in the simplicity and authenticity that these elements provide, as they evoke feelings that words sometimes fail to convey.
Themes
NatureEmotionEscapeCommunicationMusicUnderstanding
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech on the importance of nature, one might quote Pasternak to emphasize the need to reconnect with simpler forms of expression.
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.
Boris PasternakRead
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.
Boris PasternakRead
Our evenings are farewells. Our parties are testaments. So that the secret stream of suffering. May warm the cold of life.
Boris PasternakRead
The most extraordinary discoveries are made when the artist is overwhelmed by what he has to say.
Boris PasternakRead
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.
Boris PasternakRead
Similar quotes
Your only problem, perhaps, is that you scream without letting yourself cry.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
My friend Adele describes fundamentalism as holding so tightly to your beliefs that your fingernails leave imprints on the palm of your hand... I think she's right. I was a fundamentalist not because of the beliefs I held but because of how I held them: with a death grip. It would take God himself to finally pry them out of my hands. (p.17-18)
Rachel Held EvansRead
I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted to lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free.
Sylvia PlathRead
Superstitions, bigotries, hypocrisies, prejudices, these phantoms, phantoms though they be, cling to life; they have teeth and nails in their shadowy substance, and we must grapple with them individually and make war on them without truce; for it is one of humanity's inevitabilities to be condemned to eternal struggle with phantoms.
Victor HugoRead
His lifetime was less than a fraction of a second in infinity. Or maybe he did not even exist; maybe human beings, the planets, everything in Creation were a dream...an illusion. He smiled with humility when he remembered.
Isabel AllendeRead
It is with our entire past ... that we desire, will and act ... from this survival of the past it follows that consciousness cannot go through the same state twice. The circumstances may still be the same, but they will act no longer on the same person ... that is why our duration is irreversible.
Henri BergsonRead